Coldbrook

17

Jonah had been too amazed at what he was seeing to consider what he might see. And from the moment when he had voiced his acceptance to the Inquisitor he had placed himself in that strange being’s hands, and in his own hand lay the certainty of the Inquisitor’s demise. Warm and flexible, the small trigger sat in Jonah’s palm. When he rolled it, he felt a linked sensation in his chest, a twisting knot against his heart that took his breath away. There was such potential there. But not yet.

‘Time to leave these unclean worlds,’ the Inquisitor said, and held out his hand. Jonah looked close, and was shocked to see the clearly defined lifeline on his palm, hairs on his arm, and dirt ground into his creased fingertips. It looked far too human.

‘How do you speak English?’ Jonah asked. ‘How do you know so much?’ But the Inquisitor did not answer. Jonah took the proffered hand and saw the smudged tattoo on the inner arm again, its shape ambiguous, its edges bled and faded. And then he recognised it, and the shock struck him numb.

HMS Cardiff, Jonah thought. The circle of rope encircling a castle turret: the Cardiff’s crest. He had seen it before when he was younger, when he had briefly considered a career in the navy. Perhaps, in another world, his decision had been different.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. But the Inquisitor had turned and had started walking, expecting Jonah to follow and showing no emotion. Whether he had seen Jonah’s shock or not, he was way beyond such Earthly concerns now.

The Inquisitor left that world, and then they were travelling. There was no slow transition: one moment Jonah smelled blue flowers and ferns, and felt the breeze in his hair; the next, they were in between. There was no sense of movement, nor of time passing, and yet worlds were being passed by. Whole oceans of possibilities, countless realities, all flitted past, and Jonah could only sense the magnitude of what was beyond, and the nothing of where they were. The breach that Coldbrook had formed through from one Earth to another had taken account of time and space, but the route they now travelled was timeless, and without space. In the breaches there had been memories, but here there was nothing. Where are we? Jonah thought, but even ‘where’ held no significance here.

In that non-place there was nothing around him but the Inquisitor, and he was the one thing that Jonah had no wish to see, or smell, or sense through body warmth. He tried to close off his senses, but they were not his own. He was a prisoner already.

The instant ended, and a bright light seemed to fill him and then bleed away. I’ve come so far, he thought. He had to watch; had to be aware. He could not ruin this.

Jonah opened his eyes.

The room felt painfully familiar — buried, windowless, with the weight of the world all around. But that was where any familiarity ended. He and the Inquisitor stood in the centre of the room on a smooth circular stone, worn down through the ages by generations of footsteps. Surrounding the stone were seven smooth metal uprights, waist-high and three inches thick. They glowed faintly, and Jonah could hear a subtle ringing in his ears, as if the uprights were still vibrating with some mysterious echo.

Beyond them, the blend of modern and archaic confused his senses. Three desks buzzed and hummed, while the three people standing behind them were dressed in fine robes, inlaid with gold designs and glittering across the chests with flickering lights. They wore headpieces with microphones and earpieces, one wore heavy-framed glasses, and all three focused intently on their desks. Jonah could not see what they were doing, but their concentration was evident as the washed-out white light of reflected computer screens played across their faces.

Behind them, a tapestry covered one wall, a creation of obvious antiquity that showed Jesus lying in the Virgin Mary’s arms, dead and not yet risen again. Another wall held a simple wooden cross, and the others were home to a collection of religious artefacts — crosses, artwork, carvings, parchments.

Jonah breathed in and smelled something vaguely spiced, an unpleasant aroma that reminded him of age and neglect. The Inquisitor removed the mask across his nose and mouth and inhaled, sighing deeply.

A woman behind one of the desks glanced up at Jonah and the Inquisitor.

‘Deus nobiscum sacri itineris,’ the Inquisitor said. The woman flicked a switch on her desktop, and the metal poles surrounding the smooth stone slid soundlessly into the floor.

‘Deus in nobis,’ she said. ‘Please move along, Revered One. Busy day.’

Busy day, Jonah thought, wondering what she meant. ‘Who are you people?’ he asked, but it was as if no one had heard him. The poorly lit room thrummed with power. It was a nauseating feeling.

The Inquisitor took his arm and steered him across the room towards a door. It was set in an ornate archway, a beautiful structure that sickened Jonah with its intricacy and the care that must have been taken in creating and maintaining it. They find time for beauty while doing their best to destroy, he thought. He pulled free of the Inquisitor’s grip and turned to face the three robed people, hating them for their casual manner, shaking with anger. The trigger in his pocket seemed to call to him, urging him to explode the disease through his heart and set himself to bite.

But the Inquisitor grasped his shoulder and pulled him on, and as Jonah reached one hand into his pocket the room lit up.

Again Jonah shrugged the Inquisitor’s hand from his shoulder and turned around. The smooth circular stone glowed briefly and brightly, and the metal rods rose swiftly from the floor, accompanied by a gush of silver steam. As the glow died down, two shapes appeared within the metal circle, forming on the stone.

How many feet to wear that stone down so much? Jonah wondered. But then the shapes manifested some more, and all conscious thought was ripped away by shock.

This new Inquisitor was a woman, but there the differences ended. She still wore the familiar robes, the strange mask that leaked steam, the bulbous goggles that hid her true eyes, and the scalp hat which Jonah had started to believe had become a part of the Inquisitor he knew. Beside her on the stone stood a tall man. He was perhaps several years younger than Jonah, and thinner. But it was him. Face contorted with fear, limbs shaking, blood running down across his neck and chest from a wound beneath his left ear, eyes wide and disbelieving, mouth slack and dribbling. But still Jonah.

Me, Jonah thought. That’s me. Another me. A similar, alternate me. And the first thing he did was to try and see whether this new Jonah clasped something in his pocket, something that might perhaps explode and mist the air of this wretched room with disease-laden blood.

But there was nothing except terror to this man, and Jonah wondered how much his world and life differed from his own.

‘You. . you. .’ the other Jonah said, and Jonah smiled at him.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘Wendy wouldn’t like that.’

‘Wendy,’ the terrified man said, and his shaking seemed to lessen.

‘Deus nobiscum sacri itineris,’ the woman Inquisitor said, and the robed woman behind her desk responded.

Jonah’s Inquisitor grabbed his arm again and pulled him towards the deep arched opening. He pushed him close against the door and stood back, and Jonah lifted both hands to his face, tucking the nut-sized ball into his mouth between teeth and cheek. Because something was going to happen.

Flames erupted from holes around the fine stone arch. They stripped away his clothing, so quickly that by the time he registered that the flames did not burn they had faded away. His clothing and shoes lay in a scorched pile around his feet.

Brighter, heavier flames came, searing away his body hair and then coating him with a layer of something fluid and yet dry.

Jonah stroked the ball with his tongue, and looked down at his pale old-man’s body, denuded of hair and speckled here and there with moles and other imperfections. They won’t see, he thought, looking at the fine raised scar on his chest. They won’t see. . and if they do, that will be my time. But if they don’t, my time is not yet.

He laughed softly, wondering what Wendy would make of him now. He’d always been hairy, and she’d sometimes called him her Sasquatch. Then he gasped as seven glass needles were fired at him. He felt the rush of something entering him at each penetration point, and a warmth spread through his body, flushing his torso and then filtering out into his limbs. The darts fell away to shatter on the floor.

‘Your body is cleansed,’ the Inquisitor said. ‘Time now for your soul.’

The door whispered open in front of them, ancient oak sliding into the wall. Jonah closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, gathering himself, and it was memories of Wendy that he used to clasp hold of his identity. He could not afford to lose himself here, not for an instant. He could not let fear overcome him, nor weaken him. I am Jonah Jones, he thought, and as the Inquisitor led him from the room towards whatever might lie beyond, every memory he had ever treasured solidified in his recollection, and his determination to succeed grew stronger by the moment.

The door opened onto a hallway fifty feet across, a marble-clad area that stretched out from left to right. To his right Jonah saw the hallway fading into gloom, but two hundred feet to the left was a wide opening, beyond which gorgeous blue sky and blazing sunlight were visible. Elaborate sculpted fountains lined the centre of the hall, the musical mumble of falling water perhaps there to calm the people walking by. The high vaulted ceiling was decorated with complex and beautiful paintings — the Virgin Mother cradling her baby child, the scene at Calvary with characters named in ornate writing, a Concert of Angels, and a collage of holy men marching across lightning-streaked clouds. As Jonah realised that these holy men wore facial masks that looked terribly familiar, he registered just where the crowds thronging the hallway were coming from, and where they were going.

Doorways lined the wide space on both sides, equally spaced along the high walls, all decorated with arched openings and carved reliefs. The doors opened and closed, and each cycle introduced a new couple onto the floor.

Inquisitor — and victim.

There were hundreds of them there, all walking right to left towards the light. Inquisitors marched with solemnity, and their naked victims’ reactions differed widely. Some shouted and raged, others cried, a few fought, and some walked with a blank-faced stare. Several people reminded Jonah of himself, and his heart raced as realities clashed.

Each Inquisitor, each Inquisitors’ companion, represented another Earth fallen to the zombie plague, and the scale was staggering.

And then Jonah saw that the Inquisitors had faces.

He turned to the being who had been haunting him since the moment when the experiment to open the breach had succeeded. The Inquisitor walked as before — solemn, almost proud — but he had removed the strange snout appliance, and the goggles now hung around his neck on a ragged strap made of skin. He blinked against the light, and a soft steam rose from the moisture running from his eyes. Seeming to sense Jonah’s scrutiny, the Inquisitor glanced at him.

His glistening eyes were of the palest blue, piercing and utterly human.

Jonah caught his breath and turned away. It had felt as if the man was looking into his soul. He made sure that the soft ball was secure beneath his tongue, then asked, ‘What of your world?’ His skin was crawling, his balls tingling. Someone just walked over my grave, he thought.

‘This is my world,’ the Inquisitor said.

‘But your time in the navy, on HMS Cardiff. Were your parents proud? Mine would have been. Your father, the miner, do you think he would be proud of you now?’

‘This is my world,’ the Inquisitor said again without acknowledging Jonah’s questions, ‘and pride is a sin.’ In his left hand he held the breathing apparatus that he had worn for so long. In his right he rolled and caressed a set of rosary beads. Jonah had the sudden urge to rip them away, tear them apart to send the beads skittering and bouncing across the marble flooring. But he had not come here to put on a display of petulance.

Once again he tucked the small ball between his teeth and cheek: warm, flexing. Ready to bite.

They followed the flow of people towards the opening that led to sunlight and blue sky, and alongside the staggering architecture, beautiful painted ceilings that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame, and sculptures that seemed to exude a life of their own, Jonah noticed signs of the advanced technology that he knew existed here — floating lights, glimmering laser-fields, and prayers relayed into his mind without sound. The prayers’ tone made him queasy. They shimmered with righteousness.

Unabashed at his nakedness, Jonah and his Inquisitor approached the opening at the end of the hall, and the wide stone arches framed Jonah’s first view out onto this new Earth. For a second the sun was blinding, a comforting warmth on his skin and a prickling distraction in his eyes. But after he had blinked a few times he could see, and he was perhaps not as surprised as he should have been. He’d been prepared for this, after all. And perhaps, having already seen wonders, he had been numbed against more.

He had seen St Peter’s Square a hundred times on television and in newspapers, but little had prepared him for its sheer size and splendour. An atheist all his life, still Jonah had found great beauty and splendour in religious architecture — some of his favourite buildings were cathedrals and churches, and while others were looking at the cross on the wall, he would be wondering at the tunnels, bodies, treasures and mysteries buried beneath his feet.

The square was filled with Inquisitors and their charges. They formed several lines on either side of the Vatican Obelisk, which was topped with a globe, the Earth beautifully wrought in coloured, textured metals. The lines moved forward quickly, the head of each disappearing inside a large structure built on the steps below St Peter’s Basilica. This was something else that Jonah had never seen: an intricate marble-clad building with a gold-domed roof, three main entrances onto the square, and smaller openings leading directly onto the Basilica steps. From here the line of naked, smooth-skinned people was directed up the steps and into the Basilica. Guided by their Inquisitors — in some cases helped along physically — their naked skin was stained with free-flowing blood, and even from this distance he could see that their faces looked wrong — noses snoutlike, eyes bulbous. The steps beneath them were stained black with old spilled blood, the marble having absorbed it over however long this had been happening until it looked as if the Basilica itself was bleeding, black blood running down into the square where worshippers had once sought to gather. These new worshippers were unwilling, and torture was their introduction into the ways of this world.

‘Soon you will meet the Holy Fathers, and your acceptance into our Church will begin,’ the Inquisitor said.

Jonah smiled, and nodded. And he knew at last when his time would be.