The Clown Service

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DISLOCATED

Jamie and I were still in the back of the van, or whatever mirror-image took its place here in the other plane. I sat up, consciously keeping the sensation of Jamie’s hand in mine even though we now appeared not to be touching each other, and shuffled towards the door. I reached out to open it, the handle feeling distant in my grip, as if I wasn’t quite touching it. Squeezing hard, I turned the catch, pushed open the door and swung my legs out.

The street around us had all the life of a postcard. A two-dimensional world that I was somehow sat in. There was utter silence until Jamie spoke.

‘We should take a minute,’ he said. His voice was quiet. I couldn’t tell whether he was speaking so delicately because he was acclimatising or because he was scared. When all around you is so still, so reflective, it’s hard to be the thing that breaks that peace. We had woken up in Library World.

‘It’s important to get the hang of the place before you go wandering,’ Jamie continued. ‘I picture it as if I’m a diver, regulating my breathing before dropping down into the water. Of course, part of it is remembering that here I’m not drunk.’

‘Why do you think that’s necessary?’ I asked. ‘The drink, I mean.’

He shrugged. ‘After all this time it might not be, but since when did life get so hilarious you can afford to cut back on the fun stuff? I’ve always been a bit of a control freak; the booze helps me let go of that, to just go for it. This is all about throwing yourself into the void. I’ve always needed a little liquid help to do that.’

‘And you don’t feel drunk now?’

‘Not really. You know how when you get wasted there’s always a quiet voice hovering above it all – the one that suggests that maybe it’s time to call a taxi, to put that drink back down, to stop looking at that boy on the dance floor as if he’s the most beautiful thing in the world and you’ll die if you don’t have him?’

‘Not exactly, but I get your point.’

‘That’s what I am now, the sane voice riding above the madness. The one who might just get you home if you stop dancing and drinking for long enough to hear it.’

I looked up into the flat sky as a large shadow passed overhead. It was shapeless, shifting and rippling above the clouds, an indefinable thing. I wondered if it was hunting.

‘What do you think this place is?’ I asked.

‘There are lots of theories. Some people consider it the headspace of the world, a collective dream, the noosphere. Thought given form. They say that that’s why the place is so hostile – this is where the fears go, this is the dream of a world gone mad. Reality painted by a fractured, shared subconscious.’

‘I think I’d have to be drunk just to say that, let alone believe it.’

‘To be honest it’s what I always believed. But if what Gavrill says is right, then we are also somewhere physical. Which suggests the other popular theory – that we’re in a Ghost Universe.’

‘That sounds much more sensible…’ I was beginning to wish I had never asked.

‘Are you familiar with the concept of parallel universes? That every decision we make causes a divergence? The future is a massive network of potentials, winnowed down as we make our moves, turn left or right, take that job or quit, have that cup of coffee or not. Every time we make a decision, the alternative route – the option we dismissed – drifts away as a possible future no longer inhabited. That is a Ghost Universe, the road not taken. Some people theorise that Ghost Universes prove time travel may be possible – they’re the safety valve of causality, spare realities that absorb the impact of shifting probabilities.’

I thought about Derek Lime and his machine. He had talked about similar concepts. The machine had allowed us to view the possibilities inherent in the past. If it had stayed on too long, that fluidity of time could have become modified, the infinite possible futures found in the stones of that warehouse thrown into flux until one timeline, inevitably a different one, was settled on. The whole of history would change around it. Could it be that I was now sitting in one of the casual by-products of that process? A Ghost Universe contaminating reality like chemical effluent ejected into the sea from a processing plant?

‘Maybe it’s a combination of the two,’ I suggested. ‘We’re not physically here after all. This…’ I gestured around us, ‘is just an extension of our minds.’

‘Maybe,’ he agreed, bending down to pick up a stone from the road, ‘but we still have some physicality. After all, we aren’t floating through the floor and we can touch things.’

‘But the sensation is numb. It’s not complete. In this place, when I touch you, it’s like you’re not quite solid.’

‘Yeah, we can interact with things on the higher plane but it doesn’t come as naturally.’ He threw the stone to me. I tried to catch it, but it slipped through my fingers.

‘You have to concentrate,’ said Jamie. ‘Simple physical interaction takes effort.’

This was another possible problem I had not considered. How much use were we going to be here? Would we have enough of a solid presence to fight Krishnin?

‘Ready to move?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

We stood up and slowly worked our way out of the side street and onto the main promenade.

Suddenly, Jamie gripped my arm. I looked down to where his hand, so insubstantial in this world, pinched at the sleeve of my jacket. I could barely feel it.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Look…’ he whispered.

I turned my head to try to see what had startled him.

‘Keep still…’ he cautioned.

I detected movement to our right, something swirling along the walkway.

As it came closer I was able to discern more of its shape, or at least the shape it clung to. At its core it appeared to be a man and his dog, nothing remotely threatening. As it moved it blurred and stretched, like an image that was being digitally altered. Waves of colour rippled from it as it flowed towards us. It was as if the binding lines of the man and dog weren’t enough for the information they contained; distorted colour and texture bleeding into the air and thrashing back and forth.

It stopped a couple of feet away. The dog portion lifted its muzzle to the air as if to catch a scent. Its head was a mess of after-images and the inhalation of its breath echoed. I felt Jamie’s grip tighten, desperately hoping I would neither move nor make a sound. I didn’t need the warning. I remembered what Shining had told me about this place – that you didn’t want to draw the attention of the things that lived here.

The dog’s head split to reveal a pink maw that contained more teeth than it could possibly hold. A low growl crept through the air around us, like a recording rather than a live event, something added on to this reality in post-production. The falseness of the sound made it all the more threatening, as if it was only an approximation of the danger that faced us, a translation of something our minds could not otherwise perceive.

The dog’s owner had little face to speak of, the features too blurred to be resolved into anything you could recognise. A bystander snatched in an old photograph, a smudge of pink skin and dark hair that would live on in the old image as a ghost of a real man. Its head divided in the same way as the dog’s, a random assortment of teeth, from fat yellow rectangles to insubstantial stubs, all moving as if on a conveyor belt. The growling sound came again. It sensed something was near. I could only imagine what it would do if it found us, what those teeth would feel like as they burrowed into this essence of ours that existed here.

Finally, it must have decided it was alone. The heads closed up like flowers in the evening and it continued on its way, moving along the path away from us and vanishing between the buildings.

As Jamie relaxed, so did I.

‘What was that?’

‘The things that live here take all sorts of forms, some recognisable, some not, some in-between… If this is a Ghost Universe, perhaps they are the Ghost Population – the people that might have been, the lives shed as their owners took a different path. They’re hungry – you can sense that much. Maybe they’ve become so insubstantial that they need to feed on something real.’

‘We’re not real though, are we?’ I said. ‘Our bodies aren’t here, after all, just our minds.’

‘And it’s those they feed on. What’s the body but a vehicle? It’s the indefinable energy at the heart of us they want. Thoughts and emotions, they’re the things that define sentience. The rest is just meat. We need to move carefully. Imagine you’re stood in the middle of a field of sleeping lions. In order to get to the other side you go slowly, tread carefully.’

‘We wouldn’t want to wake the lions.’

‘You’ve got it.’

I looked over my shoulder at the river. Its surface was rippled as if by winds and tides and yet those ripples were static. Like everything else it seemed to be an approximation of the real thing, an illustration of a river.

As I watched, something moved beneath its surface and I was reminded of the shadow that had passed over us when we first arrived.

‘The bigger shapes,’ I asked. ‘Are they like the thing I saw when Tim and I saved you, that wave of darkness?’

‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I’d never seen anything like that before. Maybe it was an after-effect of Krishnin being here. Something new. You get shadows sometimes, shapes that move around the edges, but I’ve never seen them actually manifest themselves as that did. I always thought the shadows were just grey areas, you know? Undefined space shifting at the edge of your perception. This version of reality catching up with your presence. Like streaming video buffering on a slow connection.’ He shrugged. ‘That was my guess anyway. Just because I can travel here doesn’t make me an expert. I can get on a budget flight to Poland. Doesn’t mean I know the first thing about the place.’ He began to walk along the promenade. ‘Except that they make exceptionally fine plumbers – I call mine at every opportunity. It’s worth every penny just to see those arms of his…’

He carried on in this vein for a while, discussing the varied muscular qualities of everyone from the people he saw at the gym (‘It’s like belonging to a strip club that tries to hurt you’) to the surly nature of the owner of his local corner shop (‘If he can’t handle my manners when I’m at my lowest ebb, he shouldn’t sell me cheap wine and marshmallow teacakes at three in the morning’).

We moved at a slow pace, frequently stopping whenever we caught a glimpse of movement elsewhere.

‘This place is packed with them,’ I said after we had been forced to stop again just around the corner from the warehouse. They came in all manner of shapes, from faux pedestrians to vehicles – cars that slid along the road to the tinny sound of recorded engines. As Jamie had said, they all seemed to be approximations of real things. Creature-things wearing bad disguises trying to blend in.

‘Whatever’s going on here must be antagonising them,’ Jamie said. ‘Think how sensitive they are to our presence. Imagine what it must be like to have actual physical presences here. As our charming Russian neighbour said – and I really must thank you for introducing us to him, so lovely that the FSB now has my postal address and can pop along and shoot me while I’m sleeping – this plane cannot bear physical intrusion. Krishnin will be like a fleck of dirt in its eye. A constant irritation it will feel desperate to scratch.’

Perhaps that also explained the shifting geography we had encountered. When Shining and I had visited here before, travelling through the approximation of Sampson Court, the place had at least looked like the real world it lay alongside. Here the roads stretched into new shapes, the landscape losing sight of the original it was supposed to be based on. In the distance, Tower Bridge reached high into the dull sky, a savage arc of metal and stone that looked like an upturned grin sculpted by a lunatic. If it carried traffic on its back, I had no desire to catch sight of it.

‘So what would happen to us,’ I asked, ‘if one of those creatures caught us? Nothing physical, I guess, because our bodies aren’t even here.’

‘I can’t speak from experience,’ said Jamie, ‘obviously, because I’m far too brilliant and careful. But there are travellers who have been attacked here, and all there is to show for it are the empty shells they leave behind. The majority of our minds are here. If we lose those, then we’ve lost everything.’

‘As good as dead then? Brilliant.’

‘Maybe worse,’ he replied, damn him. ‘I think I’d rather be dead than catatonic. I mean, there must be some brain function left behind, mustn’t there? Some trace element of our psyches still rattling inside. Imagine what it would be like to be trapped in our bodies forever, not able to do anything more than just lie there, breathing.’

‘No, thank you. I don’t think I will imagine that. I don’t think it would help.’

‘Fair enough. Let’s just agree that at the first sign of trouble we leg it back to the van.’

‘If Derek moves the van in the real world…’

‘It won’t matter. Our van is symbolic. It’s our exit point; as long as we get back to where we started before we jump back out, we’ll be fine.’

‘I wish he’d parked it a bit closer.’

We continued to make our way along Shad Thames. The buildings either side of us were strange reflections of those I had walked past the day before with Shining. On one, the glass of its windows billowed like a sail on a ship. On another, the mortar between the bricks steamed as if to vent some terrible pressure from within.

We turned the corner and the warehouse was in view.

‘Oh,’ said Jamie, ‘that’s going to make things a bit difficult for sure.’

The building was surrounded by the strange wraiths that populated this place. Every variation on the form, all swarming on the pavement around the sealed double-doors.

Jamie pulled me back, the pair of us pressed against the wall of what had been an apartment block in our world. I could feel the wall undulating behind me, as if quivering at our touch.

‘How do we get past them?’ I asked, speaking as quietly as I could.

‘We don’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s one thing staying still and hoping they don’t register you’re there, but there’s no way we can start pushing them out of the way to get to the door.’

‘We can’t just give up,’ I insisted. ‘There’s too much riding on this. Maybe we can get to it from the rear.’

‘Maybe,’ he said doubtfully.

Before we could try, the wraiths shifted. They moved as one, all stiffening as if sensing something close. I was reminded of the way a cat moves when it senses possible prey. The way it becomes static, completely tense. Its awareness utterly heightened, the cat becomes a statue, not wanting to tip off the possible prey with even a flicker of movement. The wraiths held that position. I made out a woman, her hair bolt upright as if she were hanging upside down, her face a perfect, hungry hole. Near ‘her’, what might have been a bicycle, its tyres pinched and hooked like the claws of a preying mantis. A pack of dogs, each bleeding into the next, one shifting mass of hair, claws and teeth.

I opened my mouth to speak. To ask Jamie what it was that had drawn their attention, wondering if it might be us. Then I closed it. If they hadn’t noticed us yet, they certainly would if I made a noise.

As one, they surged away from the building, flooding in the opposite direction to us and chasing after one another up the road.

After a moment, I turned to look at Jamie.

‘What do you think is happening?’

‘I have no idea,’ he admitted, ‘but something drew their attention. Who cares? Let’s take advantage of it.’

We ran up the street towards the warehouse.

SUPPLEMENTARY FILE: TAMAR

The boot pushed her straight through the open hatchway and into thin air. Tamar lashed out, desperate to stop herself from falling, and grabbed at the chain that hung from the old hoist. The rusted metal cut into her palms, but she held on with all her strength, swinging out over the road below, the hoist creaking in sympathy with her pain.

Tamar twisted at the end of the chain, turning to face the open hatchway as she swung back towards it. The figure was there again, a man dressed in military fatigues. But as she watched he seemed to fade. With a roar, she let go of the chain and let her momentum carry her through the hatchway and into her attacker. As she connected with him, her body jolted as if she had received an electrical shock. She convulsed, falling on top of the man. He seemed to be vanishing altogether but then instantly solidified, and her head spun as if with sudden vertigo. She rolled off him, trying to focus, trying to think before this man took his opportunity to strike her again. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she think straight?

She got to her feet, finding it almost impossible to keep her balance. The room around her seemed different, the walls more damaged. Great patches of daylight lit her way as she tried to run, tried to put a bit of distance between herself and her attacker. At the centre of the room there was a large table filled with equipment. Tamar glanced at it, wondering if there was something she could use to defend herself.

She caught her foot in a hole in the floorboard and stumbled forwards towards the far wall, a view of the river flying upwards before her eyes as she hit the floor. Her head was pounding, a wave of nausea rising as she pushed herself up. Hands grabbed her from behind. She kicked out with her foot, jumped up and continued to fall forward, tumbling hopelessly through the ragged hole in the wall and out into the air once more.

Shapes thrashed around her as she fell, waves of colour that she couldn’t even begin to identify before she hit the water below.

For a while there was nothing.

Then there was light and the sudden need to throw up. She had drifted to the shore, washed up in the dirt. Thick river water flooded out of her and hit the silt bank in front of her. Her bleary, tear-filled eyes watched as the ejected water seemed to contort, slapping in the sand as if it were alive. That made her nausea even worse and she vomited again. Her vision blurred and she lost consciousness once more, face down in the mud.

She woke again, better now – still confused, but the sickness had passed.

She tried to think. What was happening? She’d fallen… The man in fatigues…

Tamar rolled over onto her back and looked up. She could see the hole in the wall she had fallen from, but there was no sign of her attacker. In fact, there was no sign of anyone. She got to her feet and moved around to the main promenade, a place that should be filled with bars and people. It was empty.

She pushed her wet hair away from her face, and shook her head. Everywhere was so quiet, as if she had water lodged in her ears. She felt muffled, removed, not quite part of the world around her. It must have been the fall.

Then she began to wonder whether it was her that was the problem.

She took in her surroundings, her eyes falling on the strange, unearthly Tower Bridge behind her. She wasn’t in London; she was somewhere that was having a nightmare about London.

Panic began to swell inside her, the sense of nausea threatening to return. She knew that August dealt with some weird business. She knew that the world was not as simple, as logical, as she would like it to be. She must have been transported somewhere, to a horrible, surreal version of the city she had left.

Either that or she was still in the water, drowning, and all of this was nothing more than a hallucination as the liquid filled her lungs and the life drained out of her. Yes. That was also possible.

She climbed up from the water’s edge to the promenade above, her clothes dripping strange Mercury-like droplets of Thames water onto the pavement beneath her feet. She rubbed herself down, squeezing as much of the strange liquid out of her hair as she could. It felt oily and thick. By the time she’d finished she found herself surprisingly dry, as if the liquid had covered but not penetrated her clothes.

She walked along the promenade. Stepped up to the plate glass window at the front of one of the bars and pressed her face up against the glass. The tables and chairs were set out as if for service, but nobody was using them. Bottles lined the wall behind the bar but the closer she looked, the more she realised she didn’t recognise them. There were a variety of different coloured labels, the bottles a range of shapes and sizes, but the whole thing was fake, an illustration of what a bar should look like but without the fine detail. There were no visible brand names, the labels were a block colour with no text. As she looked, something moved beneath one of the tables: a fat, coiled shape that stretched, pushing the chairs away as it forced itself between them. It had the appearance of a fat worm or snake but was featureless, just a pale grey skin that glistened slightly in the lights from behind the bar.

She didn’t wait for it to notice her.

She walked further along the promenade. Was this where August had been taken? Toby said that the kidnapper had appeared out of thin air, grabbed her friend and then vanished again. Perhaps he had performed the same trick on her. That seemed likely. Whoever these people were, they could snatch you from the real world and bring you here. So where would they be keeping August – the warehouse? Is that why the other man had attacked her? Was he protecting their base of operations? She decided she must head back there. She would be careful of course; her attacker knew she was here and, unless he thought she had died in the fall (she scoffed at that, she was built of harder stuff), he would be looking for her.

She kept close to the buildings, dropping low and moving quickly when in the open.

As a child she had learned how to avoid the enemy, how to move quietly and stick to the shadows. They had caught her in the end, but she was older now, knew more. If she wanted to escape notice, then that was exactly what she would do.

She moved away from the river. A narrow passage had been formed by the buildings bulging towards one another, a distorted tunnel that creaked around her as she passed. Perhaps the buildings are alive, she wondered, maybe they’re as much the enemy as the men who kidnapped August? Everything was so strange around her she couldn’t discount any possibility.

The tunnel widened out as she entered the road parallel to the water, turning left towards the front of the warehouse. At least, she hoped that was where the front of the warehouse would be – the further she walked the more warped her surroundings became. Could it have moved?

The wall next to her glistened as if the brick was exuding some form of liquid. She avoided touching it as she ran along the street.

The warehouse came into view but it was surrounded by bizarre creatures – things that seemed human until you paid closer attention, saw them for the monstrosities they were.

She stopped running but, as one, they froze, then shifted towards her.

Tamar had developed an instinctive sense of when she was in danger. Whatever these creatures were, they meant her harm.

The warehouse could wait; she would be no use to August if she were dead.

She turned on her heels and ran, the creatures surging after her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: INSUBSTANTIAL

I would never call myself a planner. Till now in my career I have never needed to be. I am the person you give the plan to, the one who marches from Point A to Point B and sees that the hard thinking done by others is played out more or less as they saw fit.

Even outside work, in the hollow playground I call my social life, planning has not come naturally. I stare at things a lot, wondering what I should do about them. I run in an instinctive direction and hope for the best.

Sometimes this could be described as a virtue, a proof of spontaneity and a willingness to experiment. Sometimes it’s a massive failing.

‘So what do we do now?’ Jamie asked as we came to a halt a few feet from the warehouse entrance.

‘We get in there.’

‘Yeah, and then what?’

This was a perfectly good question. I had no idea how to answer it. ‘I can’t know what we’re going to find beyond that door; we’re just going to have to wing it.’

‘I’m not sure I’m happy with that.’

‘You should have asked earlier.’

‘I was too drunk to tie my own shoes, let alone discuss tactics. I assumed you had something in the way of a plan.’

‘In order to plan something you have to have enough intelligence on the situation to predict possible outcomes.’

‘Intelligence… yes, that does seem lacking.’

‘I mean in the sense of “information”.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Look, we’re not here physically, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we have one advantage over Krishnin. Those things may be able to harm us, but he can’t. What’s he going to do?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Can he shoot us?’

‘No.’

‘Then fuck it.’

I pushed the doors open, sick of second-guessing everything around me. My hands felt numb against the wood, but the doors swung apart and I stepped inside the building.

For all that this place had presented a distorted view of London, the warehouse was familiar. It was more dilapidated, a little larger and perhaps the shadows felt denser, more laden with possible threat; but, by then, that was probably just my paranoia.

There was no sign of Krishnin, but Shining was towards the far end of the lower floor, tied to a chair.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it isn’t Ludwig the friendly ghost.’ His left eye was puffed-up and trails of blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Krishnin had clearly beaten him.

‘Where is he?’ I asked, keeping my voice low. ‘Where’s Krishnin?’

‘Upstairs I think. To be honest, I may have nodded off for a moment.’

Jamie had crept up behind me, the look on his face once he registered the state of Shining mirroring my thoughts exactly. I didn’t know how I was going to achieve it but there was a Russian nearby who was desperately owed a sound kicking.

I moved behind the chair, examining Shining’s wrists. They were bound with plastic ties.

‘We need to find something to cut these with,’ I said to Jamie. ‘You do it while I go upstairs.’

Jamie nodded, looking towards a nearby table. Its surface was covered with tools that I had no doubt Krishnin had been using on his captive: a pair of pliers, a small hammer, several long nails…

‘The signal,’ Shining whispered, ‘you have to shut it down.’

‘I’m on it,’ I told him, moving towards the stairs.

I was moving cautiously but then I realised that my insubstantial state had another advantage: my feet made no sound at all as I walked. I ran up the stairs.

As I reached the top, I saw Krishnin, his back to me as he stood flicking switches and turning dials on a large radio set placed in the centre of the room. He was dressed in military clothes: loose trousers tucked into heavy boots, a padded waistcoat and a heavy sweater. Operational clothing, a man at war.

Somehow he sensed me, turning as I ran towards him. His face gave me a moment’s pause. For the first time, seeing him in a clear light, that wasn’t the case – his skin was grey, his mouth half-open, his eyes terribly empty. He was a dead man standing.

I jumped at him, expecting him to fall backwards under the momentum of my attack. But I was more insubstantial than I had hoped. As we collided it felt as if I had brushed into something – a large bush perhaps, or a heavy curtain; the resistance was nothing like as much as if we had both been solid.

He grabbed for me, gloved hands taking hold of my wrists, squeezing so hard his thumbs appeared to sink beneath the surface of what I perceived as my skin.

He threw me backwards and I couldn’t stop myself falling to the floor. As I landed it was as if the floorboards had been covered with something soft. I bounced slightly.

‘Troublesome ghost,’ he said, his mouth creaking into what might have passed for a smile. ‘You haven’t got what it takes to fight me. But I’m impressed. I didn’t think anyone but Shining could come after me here. My intelligence was clearly incomplete. Section 37 must be bigger than I had been led to believe.’

‘Not by much,’ I conceded, ‘but more than enough.’

I glanced at the radio. To take it out was vital. I had to focus on that.

It appeared to be wired into a separate generator (which certainly made sense – this place could hardly be over-burdened with electrical suppliers). If I could pull the cables…

Krishnin kicked at my legs. I felt them move to the side, but there was no pain. Though he was able to touch me, it seemed I couldn’t be hurt by him. I rolled over and grabbed at the floorboards, trying to pull myself forward.

His boot slammed down on my back and, for a moment, it was as if I was falling apart. Whatever body I possessed, held together by thought as it was, yielded slightly at the blow. But his boot passed through me and collided with the floor beneath. I turned over, trying to ignore the sight of his shin vanishing into my stomach. I reached up for him, grabbing at his belt and trying to pull him over.

He tilted as I yanked at him, but he didn’t fall.

‘There’s nothing to you,’ Krishnin sneered. ‘You’re smoke – let me blow you away.’

‘Not while I’m still here,’ interrupted a voice from behind him. Shining had appeared, and the small hammer from the torture instruments was in his hand. He brought it down on the back of Krishnin’s head. There was a sharp crack and the Russian staggered, his hands going to the back of his skull.

‘The wires!’ I shouted. Jamie had run up behind Shining, seen the radio set and understood what needed to be done. He moved towards the generator and snatched at the power cable. A flash of electricity sparked out making his hands ripple as, briefly, they lost their cohesion. With gritted teeth, Jamie pressed on and yanked the cable from its socket. The lights on the front of the radio transmitter flashed out.

‘Destroy it!’ I yelled to him as, on my feet again, I headed towards Krishnin. The Russian, slightly recovered, had grabbed Shining’s hands and shaken the little hammer from the old man’s grip.

Jamie moved behind the table the radio transmitter was sat on and, with obvious effort, willed himself solid enough to push it up and over, spilling the machine to the floor where it crashed with a pleasingly destructive sound.

Krishnin kicked at Shining’s knee and I heard a cracking sound.

I hurled myself onto the Russian’s back. Wrapping my hands around his neck I pulled with all the strength I could muster, feeling the man’s skull dislodge. There was a popping sound and his neck twisted. Krishnin fell to the ground.

Just smoke? Fuck you.

Shining had staggered backwards, his knee either dislocated or broken. He fell against the far wall, just managing to support himself.

‘That won’t do,’ he informed me, through gritted teeth. ‘He was dead already. It’ll take more than a broken neck to stop him.’

I looked over to where the radio had fallen. Jamie was now kicking at it. A few of his blows did damage, a dial snapping off here, a plastic fascia cracking there. But most just passed through ineffectually. I think Jamie was so panicked that he was losing the focus required to retain any solidity.

On the floor was a semi-automatic pistol, spilled from the table along with the radio.

‘The gun!’ I cried to Jamie. ‘Pick up the gun!’

Krishnin was rising up behind me, his head hanging at a sickening angle on his broken neck.

Jamie reached down for the gun and snatched it up, only for it to fall through his fingers, clattering back to the floor between us. I jumped for it and actually felt Krishnin do the same, the weight of his body passing through me, his heavy hand pushing through mine and grabbing hold of the weapon.

As he turned to face me I fought to rise above him, desperate to find enough strength in my ghost hands to hold him down. We struggled, his head lolling freakishly, hideously.

I could hear Shining behind me, shuffling forward, trying to help.

Krishnin turned the gun on me and fired.

Good luck with that, I thought. There was no way his bullets were going to stop me.

With one last surge, I managed to push down on him, twisting the gun from his hand. I snatched it and focused hard to keep hold of it. It seemed to writhe in my fingers, constantly almost slipping free. I got up and turned the gun on him. Which is when I noticed he wasn’t fighting anymore. He just lay there. Smiling.

‘I can’t imagine what you’ve got to be so happy about,’ I spluttered, for now resisting the urge to empty the rest of the gun’s clip into him.

‘Tim!’

I looked at Jamie, who was staring over my shoulder.

The gunshots. They couldn’t hurt me. I was insubstantial. They just passed right through… right through and into…

I turned to see Shining flat on his back on the floor, two bloody wounds spreading across his shirt.

I couldn’t believe it. After everything we’d done.

I moved to his side, hoping desperately there was something I could do. Was it possible for me to push these ghost hands into him? Try to remove the bullets? It didn’t take long to see that August was beyond such help.

‘Ludwig,’ he said, his face rigid but determined, biting back on the pain. ‘This is so important,’ he said. ‘You did brilliantly. No need to worry. We stopped him. We did the job. Whatever else happens I want you to remember that. The rest doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your fault.’

And then he died.

I looked up at Jamie. He just stood there, staring, not knowing what to do or say.

Krishnin was lying still. Staring up at the patchy roof. That ghastly smirk still on his face. ‘He’s wrong, you know,’ he gloated. ‘All this never mattered. I sent the signal already. Black Earth is underway and there’s nothing any of you can do about it.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: REVIVAL

a) Emergency Call Centre, Metropolitan Police, London

The first call comes in at four minutes past nine on the evening of the 30th. The call is routed through to Nigel Rogers, who has been manning his post at the ECC without break for six hours and wants nothing more than to clock off, go home and sleep. It has been a stressful shift thanks to violence kicking off at a second-division football match and what seems like a whole asylum-full of the usual line-hoggers. His faith in humankind, already worn thin by his few months in the job, has all but vanished entirely by the time the automated system queues up the fateful call.

‘It’s…’ the voice splutters through his earpiece, ‘I think he’s dead. He was in the grave. He dug himself out…’

‘Can you give me your location, please?’ asks Nigel, quite convinced he’s dealing with a joker. ‘Tell me where you are.’

‘He looks like he’s screaming, but there’s no noise… Oh God… I think he’s going to kill me… he’s—’

The phone cuts off. Nigel is already checking the location. You can’t be precise with a mobile, not without spending a lot of time and money, but you can get within spitting distance. He fully intends to report it: these time-wasters need to learn – it isn’t funny, it’s dangerous. They have more than enough on their hands without idiots like this adding to the load.

Within an hour the switchboard will be jammed by similar calls. Eventually the staff will concede they might be real.

b) City of London Cemetery, Manor Park, London

Cemeteries are like cities – they fill up over time. However much you try to expand you are always fighting against one unchanging problem: people keep dying.

The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium is the largest in the country, a plot of land that has grown and grown in the hundred and sixty years since it was established. It holds something in the region of a million bodies. That number is about to drop.

Cathy Gates is a woman who relishes space. She lives with her mother in a house that drips resentment and arguments. ‘I didn’t have a child so that I could end up in a home,’ her mother says. ‘It’s about time you paid me back the loving care I showered on you all those years.’

If pressed to identify the love, Cathy would struggle. Yet she can’t abandon her remaining parent, however much she might wish to when the old woman’s voice becomes raised and the demands increase. And so her life is one of duty and remorse. Sadness over a life lost, sacrificed in the care of an unloving mother.

She stays out when she can. To get some fresh air. Be at peace. She walks. She tends the grave of her father, a man who escaped that oppressive house ten years earlier, struck down by a heart attack in the middle of a work shift at the bakery.

‘I shouldn’t feel jealous,’ Cathy says, looking down at her father’s headstone, ‘but some days I wish my heart was as weak as yours.’

What a terrible thing to say, she thinks, brushing away embarrassed tears and making her way back towards the South Gate. What a horrible, horrible person I am.

The grass is wet with that morning’s rain and Cathy tries to find beauty in her surroundings. Something sweet to lighten the bitterness.

To her left she can see someone kneeling at another grave. They are clearly overcome with emotion, she thinks, to have fallen to their knees. She feels embarrassed to have noticed them but can’t help but watch as the distant silhouette appears to be waving its arms about, as though beating away attackers.

Maybe they’re in pain, she thinks, her mind going back to her father and the mental image she has always had of him, spreadeagled on the flour-dusted floor of the bakery, clutching at the air as his heart pounds and clenches in his chest. I should probably check…

She leaves the path, cutting through the rows of burial plots, her eyes fixed on the figure ahead of her. She doesn’t notice, for the moment, the movement elsewhere. She doesn’t hear the scattering of earth and the shifting of rocks.

‘Head in the clouds,’ her mother often moaned, ‘that’s your problem – always dreaming.’

As Cathy gets nearer she realises this is no mourner. The ground is dug up around the grave, piles of dirt and scattered clumps of turf. They must be relocating some of the graves, she thinks. She’s heard that the council have to shift bodies now and then, though why anyone would move this one, stuck at the heart of the cemetery, she can’t imagine.

If only she were to look around her she would see that this is happening all over the cemetery – splintered stumps of hands, worn down by their work, reaching for the light. But she doesn’t. Her eyes remain fixed on this one grave.

Cathy steps beneath the shadow of the pine tree and the figure begins to turn towards her. It is not sitting in a neatly-excavated hole; it is writhing in a mess of disturbed earth. She is reminded of an old cowboy picture she watched with her father when she was a child, the hero sinking into a patch of quicksand, his friends trying to feed a rope to him so they can pull him free.

‘Are you all right?’ Cathy asks, the first question that pops into her head.

The figure is now looking at her. Cathy’s second question goes unvoiced. ‘His face, what’s wrong with his face?’. She is too busy screaming.

c) Section 37, Wood Green, London

April Shining is furious enough to kill. Not an unusual state of being for her, however much she might affect an attitude of carelessness, the people around her frequently drive her mad.

‘Douglas,’ she shouts into the mouthpiece of the phone, ‘if you patronise me one more time I will drive that voter-paid-for BMW of yours right into the front of your taxpayer-funded house. I am not in the habit of wasting your time with rubbish. If I tell you that you’re facing an emergency then you most certainly are.’

A monotone dribbles out of the earpiece in response, the sort of aggressively calm speech that fuels all the best arguments in the House of Lords.

‘Oh piss off!’ she shouts and cuts off the call with a thumb stabbed so viciously it nearly forces the rubber button irretrievably into the phone housing.

Her attempts to mobilise a response to the threat of Operation Black Earth have not been successful. She has warned, begged and bribed but nobody wants to know.

‘The thinking on the Harry Reid case,’ one of her contacts at the Met has explained, ‘is that it must be some form of hoax.’

The evidence against such a pointless theory is substantial and convincing, but she has no time to offer it before the call is cut off.

She needs to get off the phone and start bullying people in person. To hell with phones. No one ignores April Shining.

d) Cornwell’s Club, Mayfair, London

‘Sir Robin?’

The jelly-like civil-servant quivers into life from the stupor brought on by his perusal of The Times and looks up at the man addressing him. He is a young man, smartly dressed but in a manner that suggests a nightclub rather than Cornwell’s. The club has thrived for over one hundred years by providing a warm place for gentlemen of secrets to sink into leather armchairs. It is like a well-maintained greenhouse, built for the cultivation of decadent begonias. It has a set of rules so long and complex it is said the main proof of being worthy of club membership is to be capable of understanding them. If Sir Robin had his way, one of those rules would ban the heliotrope tie this man is wearing. A pity he is no longer on the committee.

‘Do I know you?’ he asks.

‘We’ve never met,’ the man replies, taking a seat next to Sir Robin, ‘though I’ve been aware of you for some time, and we have a mutual acquaintance in August Shining.’

The mention of that name is never likely to improve Sir Robin’s mood and it doesn’t do so now. He looks around for his glass of brandy, determined to wash away the foul taste this fellow has just dumped upon his palate. ‘You’re one of his lot are you?’ he asks, abandoning the search for his drink and waving at a waiter for another one.

‘No,’ the young man replies, ‘he is merely an acquaintance. I have had certain dealings with him over the years. Not always favourable dealings – if that helps?’

Naturally it does. If there is one man Sir Robin truly detests, it’s August Shining.

‘Can’t stand the old shit,’ he says. He has managed to secure the attention of a waiter and gleefully orders himself a brandy, deliberately extending no hospitality to his visitor.

‘I had heard as much,’ the young man says, ‘which is why I thought it worth having a quick word. The country is about to experience a potentially catastrophic emergency.’

‘So people tell me every day,’ interrupts Sir Robin. ‘If you expect me to believe your word above the others, you’ll have to provide compelling evidence.’

‘I take it you’ve heard about Harry Reid?’

‘Name means nothing.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard about him. Died fifty years ago and yet managed to commit an act of murder yesterday morning.’

‘You sound like that idiot Shining.’

‘Good, you have heard about it, I was sure you must have done.’

Sir Robin is slightly thrown by this.

‘You will receive a phone call in a few minutes,’ the young man continues. ‘It will concern Harry Reid and throw some rather worrying new light on matters.’

‘What sort of light?’

‘He is not an isolated case. You’re about to be inundated by them. The phone call will mention two others, a woman in Fulham and a child in Sussex. I mention this only to lend a little credence to my information. Shining’s sister is trying to convince people that this is all linked to an old case. She is quite right, though nobody is willing to listen to her at the moment.’

‘Not surprised. Mouthy little sow is almost worse than her brother.’

‘Nonetheless, someone should listen to her because the right person, acting now, might just turn the tide on this affair before it gets out of control.’

‘Sounds like a load of old bunkum to me. You sure Shining didn’t put you up to this?’

‘Shining is in no position to do anything at the moment, which is precisely why he has his sister doing all the heavy lifting.’

Sir Robin’s brandy arrives, allowing him the opportunity to think while he takes the glass, sniffs it and pours half of it into his capacious mouth.

‘If this is all on the level, why are you coming to me and not acting on it yourself? For that matter, which department are you with?’

‘I didn’t say and I don’t intend to. Obviously, if I were able to act openly in this I would. Someone’s going to come out of the whole mess smelling of roses. And given half a chance I would rather that was me than you.’

Of course this hooks Sir Robin; the thought of accolades always does it.

‘And should I become involved, what are you suggesting I do?’

‘I would suggest you get an emergency committee together, mobilise armed forces and, above all, prepare a press statement about how the whole affair is well under control. The last thing you need is for the country to be seen as a risk to the rest of the world.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘You are about to become ground zero, Sir Robin. Just think how that might make other countries feel. Indeed, what might they do to ensure the devastation doesn’t spread to them?’

Sir Robin scoffs. ‘Now I know this is a load of old tosh, I think you’re—’

The young man stands up. ‘Very well, I’ll take it to someone else. Just don’t start whining in a few hours time when you’re caught with your trousers around your ankles.’

‘Hey, hey…’ Unsettled by the impressive resoluteness of the man, Sir Robin decides he’s played his hand too aggressively. ‘No need to be like that. I’m not saying I’m not available to help. What is it you want in return? You don’t come to me with something like this unless you’re after a favour.’

The young man smiles. ‘Actually, you’re quite right. I am all about favours. Let’s just say you’ll owe me one.’

With that, he walks out of the club and into Mayfair.

A few yards from the entrance of Cornwell’s, the young man – a broker from Chiswick by the name of Len Hooper – looks around, trying to remember quite how he ended up there in the first place.

e) Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London

The problem, according to Connor, is that Mikey has had more than his fair share of what little remains of the weed. The problem, according to Mikey, is that there’s fuck all to do except smoke, so what does Connor expect?

They’re sheltering in Abney Park because it’s as good a place as any, and when Shell comes Mikey’s hoping he can convince her jeans to come off. He knows it’s never going to happen, but he’s been thinking about it for days and wants to give himself the best odds he can. Having at least a small possibility of privacy might just stand in his favour.

‘She ain’t coming,’ says Connor, which pisses Mikey off for two reasons: firstly because it’s like Connor’s been reading his mind, and secondly because he knows he’s right.

‘Who cares?’ he says, because that’s the only response he can think of on the spur of the moment. ‘If she does she does…’

Connor knows better than to argue about it. He’s pissed off that Mikey’s used up their stash, but he’s not so pissed off he’s going to get in a fight over it.

‘What do you want to do then?’ he asks, because he’s bored out of his skull of sitting staring at trees, and he really hopes one of them can come up with a better way of spending the afternoon.

Mikey certainly can’t. ‘Fuck knows,’ he says and starts throwing gravel at a headstone.

As entertainment this has its limits, but it’s better than picking a fight with Connor. He doesn’t want to share more black eyes or the inevitable weeks of mutual sulking. Friends have always been in short supply for Mikey and he’s not going to push things again.

‘What’s going on over there?’ Connor wonders, staring towards the other end of the cemetery where a group of people seems to be forming.

‘Funeral innit?’ says Mikey, keeping up with his target practice. ‘Happens in cemeteries you know.’

‘Nah, they’re kicking off,’ says Connor, who has moved out of the little hollow they’ve been sat in so he can get a better look. ‘They’re going mental over something.’

Mikey, deciding that anything’s better than nothing when it comes to passing the time, gives up throwing stones and moves to stand next to Connor.

Connor seems to have a point: whatever’s going on, it’s not a funeral. There are maybe ten or fifteen of them, men and women. Some are dressed in rags, some look naked. All of them are fighting, with each other or – seemingly – thin air.

‘They’re fucking mad,’ Mikey decides, laughing.

‘They don’t look right,’ says Connor. ‘Sort of shiny.’ He’s thinking of the dolls his sister used to have. She would dress them up in different clothes, make them marry each other, stupid shit like that. He nicked them once, tore all their clothes off and strung them up by their necks, hanging from the top of her bedroom door. She went mental, screaming and crying. He hadn’t expected her to take it so badly; he’d just meant it as a joke. She kept jumping up, trying to reach them, trying to pull them down. She got the bloke one by the legs and yanked it free, but its head popped off, making her cry even more. These people remind him of those dolls: the way they move, like their arms and legs don’t bend right, the way their skin shines like plastic.

‘Oi!’ shouts Mikey. ‘What’s your fucking problem then?’

As questions go it’s a fair one, thinks Connor, wishing his mate hadn’t asked it. The shiny people turn and start running towards them.

‘Dickhead,’ he says. ‘Wankers are after us now.’

‘Fucking let ’em.’ Mikey decides. It’s cheering up a boring day, as far as he’s concerned.

Mikey changes his mind as they get close enough to really see properly. He is not thinking of kids’ dolls, he’s thinking of the dummies they have in shop windows – their fixed expressions, their rock-hard arms and legs. How when he was a kid he used to freak out at the sight of those dummies. His mum would laugh at him as he ran away from the shop windows.

‘We should run,’ says Connor, ‘there’s something wrong with them.’

‘Fucking is, if they think they can scare me,’ Mikey replies, prepared to fight his corner if that’s what’s in store.

They’re only feet away now and they’re utterly silent, their faces holding on to one expression as they reach out for the boys. On some, that expression looks angry, on others it just looks confused.

‘What’s your problem?’ asks Mikey as a man grabs him. Mikey gives the bloke a kick and starts raining punches on his head. One solid blow causes a popping sound and a thick, cream-coloured chunk of plastic hangs free from where his jawbone used to be. It’s false, shoved in place to make the face sit right for an open-casket funeral. The hole it leaves behind reveals irregular teeth, splintered bone and a tongue that sticks straight out like the engorged stamen of a grotesque flower.

‘Fuck me, Mikey!’ Connor shouts. A woman, all but naked, bears down on him and he’s throwing punches. Her distended breasts topple from one side to the other as she takes his head in her broken hands and begins to dig her thumbs in.

Connor tries to pull her hands away, kicking out at her legs, but he’s being grabbed from behind now and he can’t fight them all.

Mikey is willing to try, but even he is now realising that taking on a group this size was stupid. He shouts and swears – and screams – as they kick and batter him. Soon he is a wet, shapeless mass.

Connor feels himself being pulled between three different attackers. They can’t do this, he panics, they’re going to kill me. The woman yanks at his head as the other two pull at his legs and arms. Connor recalls his sister’s doll. If the woman pulls at his neck any harder she’s going to…

f) Home Office building, Marsham Street, London

April Shining bursts into the Home Secretary’s office and immediately begins shouting. She’s almost unstoppable. She’s been told to shut up so many times over the last couple of hours a backlog of speech has built up.

‘Ms Shining,’ the Home Secretary says, ‘if you’ll just be quiet for a moment I think you’ll find we’re already aware of the situation.’

April looks at the three of them gathered around the desk. She recognises Sir Robin immediately and forces herself to quell her natural response, which is to storm over there and punch his lights out. The Home Secretary is a given; it is, after all, her office and April would be livid to have broken in only to find her absent. The second man, however, is a total mystery.

‘Who are you?’ she asks, trying her best to loom over him. He’s a dapper chap, in his late fifties. He carries with him a whiff of the country set.

He glances at the Home Secretary, either asking permission to tell April or hoping she’ll be removed, April can’t quite tell which.

‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ April says, ‘I’m an honorary member of most governments. You can say what you like when I’m around.’

The Home Secretary sighs. ‘Can I offer you a drink, April?’

‘That would be a step in the right direction.’

‘My name’s Kirby,’ says the stranger, holding out his hand to shake April’s.

‘Jeffery’s something of an expert in all this,’ says the Home Secretary. ‘We called him in as soon as it became clear what we’re dealing with.’

‘Oh, you’ve finally accepted it then, have you? I’ve had the runaround all morning on the phone… Hang on – an expert?’

‘In reanimation,’ says Kirby, ‘yes. Though, as I was just saying, this is entirely beyond anything I’ve ever seen before.’

‘Seen before?’ April takes the drink the Home Secretary hands her and drains it. ‘How can you possibly have seen anything like this before?’

Kirby shifts in his seat. ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that.’

April looks from one of them to the next. ‘Don’t tell me you silly bastards have been looking into something similar? Oh, I bet you have… My God…You’re all as bad as one another.’

‘It’s not like that, April,’ the Home Secretary says. ‘And even if it were, it would hardly be our pressing concern.’

‘It seems to me,’ Kirby continues, ‘and I’m speaking as a medical man as well as someone of knowledge in this field, that these things are not reanimated people. No… let me be clearer, they are empty vessels. They bear no relation to the people they once were. They are, in effect, inanimate objects given a semblance of life.’

‘And what difference does that make?’ April asks. ‘Do we really need to fret about the details?’

‘We do if we want to stand a chance of stopping them,’ Kirby replies, ‘though I’m afraid I was building up to explaining that I don’t think we can. They don’t seem to respond according to any biological rules. Hack them to pieces and they keep going. Their life essence – and believe me, using such a vague expression makes me as uncomfortable as you – is indefinable. It is therefore impossible to destroy it. All we can do is hit the things with brute force until they are no longer a threat. Which might be fine if we weren’t dealing with so many of them. Conservative estimates, based on the information you found, Ms Shining, suggests we could be facing up to half a million of the things. The south is saturated worse than the North, though both Manchester and Birmingham are also badly affected.’

‘Dear God!’ The Home Secretary stares into space, unable to think of a single constructive thing to say.

April Shining, for once in her life, is struck dumb.

g) Oakeshott Avenue, Highgate, London

Geeta Sahni grips the bench beneath her as the police van takes a speed bump too fast. Everyone sways and collides with one another like the steel balls in a Newton’s Cradle. If the passengers weren’t all so terrified they would be shouting at the driver.

Andrew, with sweaty, nervous palms and a false smile, is sitting to Geeta’s left. ‘I don’t know why we’re doing this,’ he says. ‘This is a job for the SFC.’

‘You think they weren’t already called?’ replies one of the other officers. ‘From what I heard they’re drafting in everybody.’ Geeta recognises him: Leeson, she remembers – they were at training college the same year.

‘The union’s going to have kittens,’ says Andrew, ‘I’m not legally covered to carry this.’ He looks down at the Heckler and Koch G36 assault rifle he has been issued with, staring at it as if it might change into something else, something less terrifying.

‘You must have bagged decent training scores,’ says Geeta, ‘or they wouldn’t have given it to you.’

She has been thinking about this, trying to decide why she has been drafted in, and this is the only reason she can think of. Her performance during weapons training was deemed exemplary, much to her smug satisfaction and the chagrin of her male colleagues.

‘Not bad,’ Andrew admits, ‘but that’s a bit different, isn’t it? I’m shit hot on Grand Theft Auto too, but they didn’t ask me to drive.’

There’s a ripple of laughter at this, a brief release of nerves before the van draws to a halt and nobody is in the mood to laugh anymore.

There is the bang of a fist on the side of the van and the rear doors open.

The police officers step out, moving quickly but awkwardly, not sure of what they’re going to see once they’re on the street.

There is already the sound of automatic fire, the dull crack of munitions that is a world away from the rich, Hollywood noise of firefights. Gunshots are loud, flat and pinched – there is nothing romantic about them when they are in the air around you, rather than being piped from a Dolby 7.1 speaker system.

‘Come on! Come on!’ An SCO19 officer is herding them into formation, facing the oncoming crowd of aggressors. Geeta is looking for the enemy, head low, anticipating retaliatory fire. Then she realises the enemy are the civilians marching up the street toward them.

‘They’re not armed, sir,’ she shouts, then notices the bodies of those who came before her: fallen firearms officers being trampled by the advancing crowd, their black body armour glistening wet in the afternoon sun.

‘They don’t need to be,’ the commanding officer replies, ‘now pick your targets and fire. We’ve got to stop them overwhelming us.’

For a moment, Geeta can’t bring herself to pull the trigger. It goes against everything she knows, shooting into an unarmed crowd. Then she begins to recognise the civilians for what they are. They move in a jerky, uncoordinated fashion, their faces are unresponsive as shop window dummies.

Next to her, despite – or perhaps because of – his fear, Andrew is the first to fire and she watches as a couple of rounds hit one of the first of the crowd. The target is a young male, his baseball cap flying off as the bullet hits him in the face. He topples backwards, thrashing on the floor, but is soon back on his feet and advancing towards them, his face just a red whorl. Geeta thinks of James Hodgkins, of the impossibility of Harry Reid, and she opens fire.

The bullets are having little to no effect, the crowd drawing silently closer despite the hail of copper, zinc, steel and lead that the officers are hurling at them.

‘Hold the line!’ the commanding officer is shouting. ‘Take their legs out from under them!’

The officers try, and many of the crowd do fall, but that doesn’t stop them dragging themselves along the tarmac towards them.

‘Fall back!’

The officers don’t need to be told twice, running up the road to gain vital distance between themselves and an army that simply won’t respond to gunfire in the way they should.

‘What are they?’ Leeson shouts agitatedly. ‘Why don’t they stay down?’

Geeta knows. Even a bus didn’t stop Harry Reid, she remembers, so what chance do they have?

h) Various Locations, United Kingdom

It is something the world often talks about – the speed with which normality can vanish. Krishnin’s sleepers by no means attack at once – some have been quicker at digging themselves free than others – but they hit in such numbers, wave after wave of them, that the country goes from business as usual to borderline apocalypse within the space of single day.

Most people are slow to accept the sleepers for what they are. Words like ‘riot’ and ‘acts of terror’ are thrown around with wild abandon on the rolling news networks, until the footage of these strange, doll-like cadavers simply can’t be denied any longer. The emergency services are tight-lipped, the government maintaining a silence until early in the evening when the nation’s leader appears on every channel trying to reassure a nation already gone past the point of sane return.

Martial Law is declared. The streets fill with gunfire and death.

And, across the oceans, the rest of the world looks on and begins to wonder if the threat may spread to them. And if so, it wonders what precisely it should do about that.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE FEAR

My mind was raging. I was beyond logical thought. I was white noise. I was fury. I was The Fear.

‘The countdown,’ said Jamie. ‘We can’t have been here that long.’

‘To hell with the countdown,’ said Krishnin, still lying on the floor. ‘I’m not an idiot. I was ready, so I sent the signal. There was always a chance something could go wrong. Shining might have told someone. He might have known more than he was letting on, even after I had been so… encouraging. Who waits for countdowns? It was an automatic system that would have kicked in if something had happened to me… Not that anything can happen to me that hasn’t already. I am dead. Lingering consciousness infesting old meat.’

I heard the words but they didn’t register. Like water hitting a fire, they flared into steam. We had failed. I had failed. Again. Over and over again.

‘What are we going to do?’ Jamie asked. I think he was asking me. As if I could possibly know.

And then I did.

‘Why haven’t you just vanished?’ I said to Krishnin.

‘Why should I? I’m enjoying the moment. Besides… what does it matter now? I think I’m better off here than in the real London right now, don’t you think? I don’t know how many hours have passed there – it’s always so difficult to tell. But either my little army is already leaving its mark on your country or they’re clawing their way up through the earth to do so. There’s nothing you’ve got that can stop all of them. Break one apart and another will take its place. Death only comes once. I’m the proof of that.’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing over him. ‘And maybe that’s something you should have thought about. We’re going back there. All three of us.’

‘You’re giving me orders? How British of you. I don’t think I have to do a thing I don’t want to.’

‘I can make you.’

‘Really? How? Are you going to threaten to kill me?’ He laughed at that.

‘No. I’m going to threaten not to.’

He stared at me, not understanding. I looked at Jamie and saw the same look of confusion.

‘You said it yourself. You can only die once. Sünner’s drug is a permanent solution. Did you ever think that might be a problem?’

‘The opposite, surely?’

I leaned down, pressed the barrel of the gun next to his left knee and fired. The recoil knocked the gun from my hand but that didn’t matter. I focused, then picked it up again.

Jamie was panicking, hands to his face. Krishnin was staring at me. Those dead eyes of his would probably show fear if they could.

‘The Beretta 92FS,’ I said, ‘a popular military weapon. Nine millimetre cartridge, not much in the way of stopping power, but when you have fifteen in the magazine you can afford to fling them around a little.’

I looked at Krishnin’s knee. While the entry wound was small, the impact had done its work; the knee was shattered. I pushed at his lower leg with my foot. Even with my lack of solidity it pivoted quite freely.

‘I don’t think you’ll be using that leg ever again,’ I said. I aimed the pistol at his hand and fired again, taking out all four fingers and leaving congealed, useless stumps. The gun had jumped free of my grip again; there was no way my aim would be up to much over long distances, not with my inability to hold it firmly. That was fine. I planned on using the gun for surgery not target practice.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Jamie, his voice terrified.

‘I’m proving a point.’ I said, turning back to Krishnin. ‘If I can’t kill you like this – ever – then how do you think existence is going to be after I’ve really gone to town on you? What if I just cut those legs right off? The arms too? Or maybe I just set fire to you and we can all sit around and watch you pop and hiss for a while. You just became the easiest man in the world to torture. Normally, however bad it gets, you know that you’re going to be able to pass out. Or die. But I can make you nothing. A burned stump. A fucking soup of a man. Still alive. Still aware. Forever. Or…’

‘Or?’ Krishnin had lost his bravado now. While his doll-like face might not be able to show the emotion inside, I knew I had his attention.

‘Or I can actually end it for you. That’s my offer. That’s the reward I have at my disposal. I can make you cease to be. Sound attractive?’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Right now you don’t have much to lose do you? Do as I tell you. Do exactly as I tell you and I’ll keep my promise. Fuck me around and I’ll just start whittling bits off you.’

‘And what’s to stop me just traveling?’ he asked. ‘I could leave you two here at a moment’s thought.’

‘Yes, you could,’ I agreed, and shot him in the other knee. ‘But you’d have a real job dragging yourself out of the warehouse, the other warehouse, the real one, before we came chasing after you. And if you make us do that, the deal’s off. So think about it very carefully.’

‘But he’s already triggered the signal,’ said Jamie. ‘What’s the point? He’s already won!’

‘Then he won’t mind doing as he’s told for a bit will he?’ I said. ‘We’re all going back together.’

I soon had cause to regret having shot the bastard in the legs. Given how difficult it was for Jamie and me to interact with physical objects, it was perhaps foolish to have created a big one that needed dragging around. Yet, as annoying as it was, I couldn’t help relishing my little eruption of violence. I hated that man more than I have ever hated anyone. I enjoyed what I did to him. Sorry. Be disgusted at me if you want. Frankly I don’t care.

We found a sack truck Krishnin had used to transport his equipment – that at least made the work a little easier. We rolled him down the stairs, strapped him on, and between us managed to push him out of the warehouse.

There was still no sign of the creatures that had been loitering outside when we arrived. Whatever had drawn them off was still doing its job.

‘It feels wrong,’ said Jamie as we wheeled our way back towards the van, ‘just leaving Tim there.’

‘Shining,’ I said, ‘his name was August Shining. And it doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.’

I was just about keeping it together, partly for Jamie’s sake, partly because I was focusing the anger and panic on keeping myself moving. Still, as we made our way along that surreal, twisted version of Shad Thames I felt The Fear bubbling away inside me. It had fed well. My earlier failures, the stains on my personnel file that had seen me relegated to this section in the first place, faded away to nothing. They had dumped me here because they thought I couldn’t do any more harm. I had managed to prove them wrong. The operation was a bust, Shining was dead and Krishnin’s plan had come to pass. I failed to see how I could fuck up any more than I had already.

‘Wait.’ Jamie stopped and the sack truck pulled free of his grip.

I looked ahead. To our right was the large building whose glass front had been stretched sky high, and reflected in it was a sea of movement. The creatures, the Ghost Population, were on the move, just around the corner and coming right for us.

As we watched a figure suddenly appeared, hurtling into the street. This must have been what had attracted them in the first place, this was what they wanted: Tamar.

She saw us and the look of fear on her face intensified. ‘They are behind!’ she shouted, ‘they are…’

They are coming, I thought. And we didn’t stand a chance of stopping them.

‘If we don’t move,’ said Jamie, ‘they might pass us by. It’s her and Krishnin, they’re real. They’re drawing them. We have to move back. Be still. Hope they don’t notice us.’

And what about Tamar? One more failure? One more victim? One more person I couldn’t help? The thought of that curdled inside me. The Fear, only barely held back through all of this, began to burst out.

I might not have had real lungs there in the Ghost Universe but my breathing became shallow nonetheless. The white noise that beat down on me during an attack hit me like a wave. I saw Tamar mere feet away, not understanding why we simply stood there, the look on her face now a mixture of fear and contempt. She recognised my inaction. She knew I had frozen. Just another witness to the stupid waste of skin and bone that was Toby Greene. I held my insubstantial hands to my face feeling they had always been insubstantial. I was the Insubstantial Man. I was the eternal ghost haunting my own stupid life.

Then I thought of Shining, of the unshakable faith he had placed in me. The first person ever to have done so. To have seen something. Some potential. Some point. And here I was, with him barely cold, trying to prove him wrong.

I fucking burned.

The air filled with darkness, a wave of shadow that flooded out of me and launched skywards. The dark thing Shining and I had first seen in this plane when we had rescued Jamie. The thing that Jamie hadn’t understood. That lethal presence that had surged towards us. Towards me. That wasn’t something that lived here. Here in this plane where thought was everything, where we had fought by strength of will, it was something I brought with me. Now it took flight again. The Fear. Given form. Shed by the silly bastard that had let it hold onto him for all of his life. Who had let it control him. Damn him. Push him. Kick him. Cheapen him.

I let it go.

The Fear flooded down the street before us. Tamar fell to the ground as it rushed over her head and moved on, ice cold and endless, colliding with the creatures that had been chasing her. They winked out, one by one, swallowed by The Fear as it swallows everything. As it had once threatened to swallow me.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Jamie asked, his voice terrified and yet in awe.

‘An old friend,’ I said, ‘and our best chance of getting out of here.’ I looked to Tamar. ‘No questions. No time.’ I pointed at Krishnin on the sack truck. ‘Push him as fast as you can and follow us.’

CHAPTER TWENTY: POSSIBILITIES

a) Astral Plane, Another London

There was no sign of the Ghost Population as we rounded the corner and found ourselves face to face with the mirror-image of Derek’s van. It seemed that The Fear was as crippling to them as it had been to me. I wondered if either Krishnin or Jamie understood what had happened. After all, this plane was one they both knew only too well. A place where the currency of the mind was easily spent. If they did, I was long past caring. They could think whatever they liked of me.

I had handed the gun to Tamar. Tucked in the waistband of her jeans it was more secure than gripped in my unreliable hands. ‘Don’t be afraid to use it,’ I told her, ‘if he gives you even the slightest trouble.’

‘You will take her back with you,’ I said to Krishnin. ‘Or you become my hobby for the next few months, understood?’

He offered no reply but I decided I had him for now. He wanted to know what I could offer. No doubt he believed he could slip away again easily enough if it wasn’t to his liking.

I opened the van doors, startled to see another version of Jamie lying in the back.

‘That’s just the holding pattern,’ he said. ‘My bookmark, if you like.’

‘Give me a hand with this,’ I said as the three of us lifted Krishnin and the sack truck inside the van. I wanted us all as close together as possible.

The rest of us climbed in, Tamar and I stepping awkwardly around Jamie’s inert twin.

‘You are very strange people, I think,’ said Tamar. ‘You throw up darkness, keep dead talking Russians as pets and leave copies of yourselves in the back of vans. I do not know what my August sees in you. Where is my August?’

‘When we’re back,’ I said, looking at Krishnin. ‘Go. Now.’

His rigid mouth almost had an impression of a smile and he reached out to take hold of Tamar’s arm.

‘Ready?’ I said to Jamie. ‘I want us to arrive at the same time if possible.’

He nodded and lay back into the replica of himself, the two merging. I lay down next to him and took his hand.

‘I’ll tell you where Shining is, my dear,’ said Krishnin, just as I felt this world begin to fade. ‘I shot him.’

The world jumped and I heard Tamar cry out.

We reappeared to the sound of screaming and the squeal of tyres.

‘Christ!’ came the northern tones of Derek Lime as he fought to keep his van on the road even as it suddenly filled with four struggling people, one of them clearly hell-bent on killing another.

There was a sudden deafening roar as Tamar shot Krishnin. Guns should not be fired in the back of transit vans; they are far too loud.

I just about heard the sound of Derek swear once more, a distant grunt lying beneath the agonising whine in my ears, then the van screeched to a halt and we all ended up in a pile behind the seats of the driver’s cab.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Derek shouted, trying to shift his weight so he could look over his shoulder.

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘We’re fine.’

Whether true or not, someone had to try to stop the madness before it got completely out of control. My mouth was painfully dry, my throat sore, every movement was a fight against pins and needles.

‘Tamar?’ I asked.

She was still raging against Krishnin, kicking at the broken body, his head now little more than splinters and bloody mush.

‘Tamar!’ I shouted, reaching out to her, vaguely aware that I had managed to sprain something in my wrist in the crash. ‘Enough! Not now. We need to focus.’

‘Focus?’ she sneered. ‘What do you care? You did not know him. Not like I did.’

‘I can bring him back,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Bring him back. But I need you to calm down. Now.’

I was shouting. A mixture of anger, panic and the fact that my ears were still ringing.

‘I think she’s deafened me,’ said Jamie. ‘Oh Christ, I didn’t want any of this…’

‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ asked Derek.

Part of me wanted to tell the lot of them to shut up, to stop asking questions I didn’t have the time to answer. But I swallowed it. Tried to remain calm.

I looked at Derek and the view through the windscreen. ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Trying our best to get the hell out of London,’ he said. ‘Where the hell were you all this time? You’ve been gone for over a day. You have no idea the shit we’ve all sunk into.’

That long? If the radio signal had been binding the two realities together, breaking it had severed the link; no wonder my body ached. ‘I have some idea, actually,’ I replied. ‘The man Tamar just shot is the one responsible for it.’

I looked over to where Krishnin was still writhing, despite the demolition of most of his head.

‘He’s like them!’ said Derek. ‘They’re everywhere. We’ve got to keep moving, the city’s full of them.’

‘I need your equipment,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s the only way we can dig ourselves out of this.’

‘What are you talking about man? There’s no going back now. These things are all over the country, there’s talk of airstrikes.’

‘Airstrikes?’ echoed Jamie.

‘Not ours,’ said Derek. He sighed, trying to marshal his thoughts.

‘Look. The place is overrun with these things. Dead people, only they’re not, they’re mad, running through the streets, smashing the hell out of anyone and everything. The rest of the world is panicking too. They think it’s viral. They think the only way to be sure it doesn’t spread is by making sure the outbreak is limited to the UK.’

‘And so they’re going to try to sterilise the source, regardless of how many people are still here? That’s horrendous.’

‘And it’s happening soon. London is by far the worst affected, so that’s the first target. The UK government has agreed to sanction a nuclear strike on the city in the hope that they can mop up the remaining stuff elsewhere. It’s all panic and politics. Not that it matters – there’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘There is,’ I said, ‘but you’re not going to like it.’

b) Hard Shoulder, M1 Motorway, Nr. Junction 11

‘What part of “insanely dangerous” did you not understand?’ Derek was shouting. ‘This is not something you can screw around with – the consequences are potentially catastrophic.’

‘Look around you,’ I said. ‘We’re overrun with the living dead and they’re planning on dropping nukes on London. What makes you think this isn’t already a catastrophe?’

‘Listen. You don’t get the scale of this. You start interfering with causality and all of this is nothing. This is a pinprick. A mosquito bite.’

‘But the change is minimal,’ I insisted. ‘Think about it, Krishnin shouldn’t even exist in the first place.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with causality. The universe doesn’t care what abominations we build, it’s not the moral arbiter of reality. It just is. He exists and so he’s part of the fabric of our timeline.’

‘Barely. He has spent most of it in another plane entirely. The impact he’s had is this… the last couple of days. This one operation. If we remove him now, before things develop even further, the change is minimal.’

Derek thought about this. I could see that he wanted to. I could see that he was considering it.

‘We will save thousands of lives,’ I said, ‘including Shining’s.’

‘Who?’

‘Leslie.’

‘Right. “Leslie”.’ Derek rubbed at his face, trying to come to a decision. I wondered if I could operate the equipment without him. I would certainly try. If he said no, then I would do whatever it took and to hell with anyone who was in the way. I’m sure he must have realised that.

‘It only works on things that are not alive,’ he said finally.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, do you?’

‘You say that, but he’s obviously alive in some way – they all are. We’re saying they’re dead because they’ve died once already, but how you do you really define life? Moving around is usually a fair indicator…’

‘Whatever consciousness he had, I think Tamar’s spread it over the inside of your van.’ I said. ‘But… whatever. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work – and nothing will happen.’

‘We’ll get blown up.’ Derek gestured towards the back of the van. ‘The controlling mechanism is back there, but I had to leave most of the kit back at the warehouse. When I heard what they were planning I didn’t want to waste time packing, I just grabbed the potentially dangerous bit and ran. They could drop the bomb at any minute.’

‘All the more reason to hurry then,’ I said. ‘Please. We have to try this. I think it’s the only option left open to us. We go back there, we turn your machine on what’s left of Krishnin and we cut him out of recent history.’

‘Oh God!’

I turned to look at Jamie. He was looking at his mobile.

‘So many texts from Alasdair. The silly sod came looking for me. Then got himself cornered by those…’

He began to cry, dropping the mobile to the floor of the van where I could see a single pair of goodbye ‘X’s on the screen.

‘This cannot be allowed to stand,’ I said to Derek. ‘We have one chance to make it all stop. Yes there are risks. There always are.’

‘These are pretty big bloody risks,’ he said, but I could tell from the tone of his voice that I had won him over. ‘Oh sod it,’ he continued. ‘If I had a chance to save the world and I didn’t take it…’ He started the van again and drove on to the next exit. ‘Of course,’ he said to himself, ‘my chance to save the world could be stopping you doing something as stupid as this…’

c) Brent Cross, London

Getting back into London was easy enough; the choking traffic moving in the other direction proved testament to Derek’s description of panic as car after car fought to escape the capital.

‘The emergency services just can’t cope,’ he said. ‘Spread too thin from the start. Estimates vary, but we’re potentially dealing with an attacking army of half a million, countrywide. It’s worse in the built-up areas, of course; some rural communities have barely felt the pinch. It’s all down to odds. A large percentage of bodies buried in the latter part of 1962 and the whole of 1963 have become active. Some are a greater threat than others. The decomposition may be negligible, but cadavers that were damaged can’t regrow missing parts, obviously. On the way out, I saw little more than a torso, dragging itself along the middle of the road.

‘But it’s not just the numbers, it’s the fact that they’re hard to put down. You have to completely incapacitate them. I saw an armed response team overrun by a massive crowd of the things. They say it’s best to aim for the legs. At least that stops them running after you.’

I called April. She managed to sound utterly nonplussed at the fact that I was back in action. I got the impression that her hands had been pretty full trying to provoke some form of action from the government. Now that was all redundant. No need to convince anyone of imminent trouble when it’s running down every street.

I told her what had happened to her brother, quickly followed by what I hoped to do about it.

‘I dare say you know what you’re doing,’ she said, ‘or not. I was never sure he did half the time. You made a good pair, that’s for sure.’

‘And still will, if I’ve got anything to do about it.’

‘Bless you.’ I could tell she was unconvinced. I couldn’t blame her.

‘You know the clock’s ticking, don’t you?’ April reminded.

‘Derek said there was a threat of a nuclear strike.’

‘I couldn’t possibly comment on an open line. Still, what are those silly old buggers going to do about any indiscretions? Yes. It’s been agreed. We have a couple of hours at most. Ridiculous. Makes me sick the way the stupid shits behave.’

‘You tell them.’

‘Oh I have, darling, I have.’ She paused. ‘You shouldn’t have come back, you know. There really isn’t time.’

‘Time is movable,’ I replied. ‘Or at least it better had be.’

‘You’re a good boy. Tell you what, I’ll meet you there, if only to give you a lingering kiss before we’re burned to shadows.’

‘Right.’ I didn’t quite know how to respond to that.

‘You could at least try to flirt with an old lady given we’ll only have a few hours of existence left.’

‘Sorry. Erm… that will be lovely, you… sexy thing…’

‘Oh shut up. It’s awful – you’re making me feel sick.’ She hung up.

‘I am sorry,’ said Tamar as we cut into the city. ‘I should not have acted in the way I did.’

‘No worries,’ I assured her. ‘To be honest I had planned on doing something similar myself. I don’t know how Krishnin managed to jump between the planes but I’m willing to bet he needed to think hard in order to do it. That’s not something he’s going to be doing again.’

‘Do you really think we can bring August back?’

‘If this works. If Krishnin had actually died back in 1963, then none of this would have happened. Derek is panicking because it’s dangerous to interfere with history, but Krishnin was barely part of this world over the last fifty years, so – bar the last forty-eight hours – the change shouldn’t be too significant.’

‘And you’re going to go back and kill him?’

‘Not exactly. The machine needs a specific focus. Usually an area of space, but in this case we’re going to use Krishnin himself. We’ll see moments from his life, significant events. I’ll be waiting for one in particular – the time he should have died – when I intend to give history a helping hand.’

‘I think you are all very mad. But I hope it works.’

Her and me both.

I asked Derek to pull over so that I could get out and join him at the front; I was sick of rolling backwards and forwards in the rear and not being able to see where we were going. Besides, if things got difficult he might be in need of a supportive co-driver.

I caught my first sight of the sleepers just past Brent Cross. A small group of them were attacking one another as the van drove by. Checking in the wing mirror, I could see them abandon their own squabbling in favour of trying to catch up with us.

‘Do they do anything but fight?’ I asked.

‘Not that I’ve seen,’ Derek replied. ‘They’re violence personified. Like a raging mob, fighting each other, smashing up cars, buildings… all they want to do is attack.’

‘I wonder what it is inside them that makes them that way…’ I told him about Gavrill, about his old colleague who had decided the reanimated corpse knew it shouldn’t exist and wanted nothing more than to hit back at the world it had woken up into.

‘That all sounds a bit spiritual to me,’ Derek said. ‘It’s probably more a case of falling back on instinct. The body is being attacked internally so the endorphins kick off: fight or flight.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Still, what do I know? I’m a physicist and ex-wrestler. My experience of biology is pretty much limited to bruises, fractures and groupies.’

I could see a large bonfire in the distance, over towards Regent’s Park.

‘You get a lot of those,’ said Derek. ‘People have been building them in the open spaces. Burning the bodies. Someone built a pyre twenty-foot high in Hampstead Cemetery – they were digging up all the bodies and throwing them into the flames, just in case that might stop them.’

As we crossed Tower Bridge it was beginning to grow dark. I looked over the edge of the bridge at a rough line of bodies thrashing their way through the water.

‘The river’s full of them,’ I said.

‘They fall in and then the current carries them. It’s not as if they can drown, after all.’

We reached the warehouse a few minutes later and Derek parked the van right outside.

‘Looks like the coast is clear,’ he said, checking the mirrors. ‘Be on your guard though; they’re pretty quiet so they can sneak up on you if you’re not careful.’

We got out and he moved around the back to let everyone out and collect the few pieces of equipment he needed.

Jamie showed he had recovered some of his old sharpness as he climbed out. ‘I am seriously considering defection,’ he said, sneering at what remained of Krishnin. ‘I don’t like being a spy anymore.’

It was disgusting pulling Krishnin’s body out. It flailed at us, trying to fight back.

‘It makes me think of flatworms,’ said Jamie. ‘Cut bits off them and they all keep wriggling. If you think I’m touching that, you’re sadly mistaken.’

‘Sod it,’ said Derek, grabbing it by its arms and slinging it over his back like a sack of potatoes. ‘After the last couple of days you become numb to the horrible stuff. Bring my kit, would you?’

I picked up the single plastic storage box and stepped back as Tamar closed the doors.

‘We are not alone,’ she said, looking past the van.

A large group of sleepers was running towards us. This was the first time I had seen them up close. They moved quickly but chaotically, limbs flinging about as they fought to get at us. Their faces were solid and expressionless. They were like ambulatory shop window dummies, human dolls.

‘The gun,’ I said to Tamar, shoving the box at Jamie.

After shooting Krishnin with it, Tamar had returned the gun to her waist band. I had let her keep it, more to show that I forgave her using it than anything else. Now, unarmed and reliant on her, I wished I’d taken it back.

‘Stand back, children,’ instructed a voice behind us and April appeared carrying a shotgun. It looked utterly ridiculous in her hands, but she quickly put it to use, sending a couple of shots into the advancing group, cutting several pairs of legs from beneath them.

‘Get inside,’ said Derek, ‘or we’ll be attracting more of them!’

Tamar took a couple of shots as April reloaded. We all ran inside the warehouse as the shotgun barked again.

April came through the doors last, Derek and Jamie slamming them shut behind her.

‘That was as close to orgasm as I’ve been for years,’ she said, handing me the gun. ‘Say what you like about the impending apocalypse but it certainly knows how to show a girl a good time.’

The sleepers began banging on the doors, Derek and Jamie only just managing to hold them back as they dropped a bar across them.

‘I don’t know if it’s going to hold,’ said Derek.

‘Tamar,’ I said, ‘help Jamie secure those doors. Derek, get everything up and running as quickly as you can. We’re not going to have long to do this.’

Derek nodded, picked up the plastic box and hoisted it over to the desk where the rest of his equipment still lay.

‘I need you to drag the projectors further in,’ he said, gesturing towards the four things that looked like speakers. ‘We want them all pointing towards the body, keeping the focus as narrow as possible.’

‘This the bastard that shot my brother?’ April asked, looking down at Krishnin.

I nodded, starting to pull one of the projectors across from the corner of the room.

She stared at him for a moment, watching the body writhe. Then kicked it, hard. She said nothing, just walked over towards one of the other projectors. I noticed the dampness in her eyes, even in the low light. She had loved her brother dearly.

Derek switched on a pair of arc lamps, one aimed at his equipment, the other pointing towards Krishnin’s body.

‘I need a couple of minutes,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’

‘Pleased to hear it,’ I admitted.

The banging at the doors seemed to be increasing.

‘I think they’re drawing a crowd,’ said Jamie. ‘The doors are in decent nick. They’ll hold for a while, but the more of them that throw their weight into them, the sooner they’ll buckle.’

‘That is obvious,’ retorted Tamar. ‘Help me find more things to make a barricade.’

Jamie pulled a face at her back but began gathering the empty cases of Derek’s equipment and the few pallets that littered the place.

‘How long have we got before they send the missiles?’ I asked April. I still couldn’t believe it had descended to such a situation, the capital to be wiped out in a flash.

‘They weren’t being entirely open with me about it,’ she said. ‘Once everyone realised what was going on I was smartly put on the sidelines. You know what men are like – only too happy to have you help you out in the beginning, but soon passing you over when it comes to the important stuff. I hate to say it, but it could be any time. They kicked up a fuss to begin with, but as soon as the Americans put the pressure on you could hear the resistance crumble.’ She moved over to the small window and glanced out at the gathering crowd of sleepers. ‘If only they’d organised themselves quicker. When did we get so good at rolling over at the first sign of panic?’

‘We are not rolling over,’ I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She nodded, turned around and gave me a hug. I felt awkward to begin with but then decided that was pointless and stupid. If you can’t hug someone without embarrassment at the end of the world, then when can you?

‘OK,’ said Derek, ‘I’m ready. Most of you are going to need to step back. Charlie, you understand I don’t really know what I’m doing here, yes? Krishnin’s body is the trigger, rather than the room around us. We will see him change rather than the environment. I can create the state of temporal flux, but what we see then is beyond my control. I also don’t know how it might affect you, standing so close to it all.’

‘We’re winging it,’ I said. ‘It’s OK. I get that. We’re beyond planning here, I’ll take my chances.’

I picked up April’s shotgun, checked it was loaded and then turned to Derek. ‘Right. Let’s do it.’

He turned on the machine and the projectors hummed into life. Krishnin’s body, still writhing on the dirty concrete, stiffened. I was reminded of the Ghost Population, the way their physical presence had seemed unstable and easily distorted.

Suddenly, the body vanished and I found myself looking at a young boy. Krishnin as a child. His face was smudged with dirt and a thin trickle of blood crept from one nostril. It looked as if there were tears in his eyes. What incident was this, I wondered? Had he been bullied at school? Beaten by a parent? I tried to feel something for him, for the child that could have been something else, something better. I couldn’t. I raised my shotgun, not ready to fire yet – if I killed him when he was a child then who knew what future events might change? I had to bide my time. But I wanted to be ready. I needed to be able to pull the trigger quickly.

He changed again and I recognised this version of him only too well. The gun in his hand, the dead expression. He had just shot August Shining and I knew he was only too happy about it.

And again. A young man, dancing with a girl, their extended arms vanishing as they stretched beyond the influence of the projector. Was this his first love? Was someone like him even capable of the emotion?

‘Ten seconds!’ Derek shouted. ‘Everything’s working fine.’

There was a loud crack from the main doors as the sleepers pressed against it. They would be through any moment.

‘We haven’t got long!’ said Jamie. ‘That barricade isn’t going to stop them.’

Krishnin altered once more, older, dressed in a long black coat, a drink in his hand. He raised the glass in a toast and took a large mouthful.

And again: a similar age but he was a mess, his hair dishevelled, his shirt undone. Sweat was visible on his forehead and throat. He held up a fork, its tines coated in thick blood. I remembered the story Shining had told me, about how he had had to listen to this man as he tortured someone. Was that what I was seeing? Had that moment been important because he had found it hard to bear or because he had enjoyed it?

And again: the child returned, dressed for a funeral. He looked up and smiled.

‘Oh God…’ I turned to see April still looking out of the window. A point of light flaring in the distance. ‘We’re too late!’ she cried. ‘They’ve done it! The stupid bastards have done it!’

My finger tightened on the trigger, I had to take the shot…

The boy vanished and here was my moment… Krishnin dressed in his military clothes, a spray of blood erupting from his chest as a .44 bullet entered it.

The sound of wind. The shockwave. The flash of light.

I fired the shotgun into the past. Saw Krishnin’s face become nothing but red mist.

And then there was nothing but heat and noise and dust.

SUPPLEMENTARY FILE: SHAD THAMES, 1963

‘My God, lad,’ said O’Dale, ‘you might have tried to wound him.’

August Shining stared at the body lying on the floor in front of him.

‘He was… didn’t you see? It was like he was disappearing, vanishing right in front of us.’

‘I thought that,’ agreed Cyril. ‘He was just fading away.’

O’Dale scoffed. ‘Well, he’s certainly faded away from above the neck. You took his head clean off.’

Shining began to shake, the gun falling from his hands. ‘His chest,’ he said. ‘I aimed for his chest.’

Then he turned and threw up all over the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw someone run out of the front door, but he was hardly in a position to do anything about it.

‘You bagged him in the chest as well,’ O’Dale was saying, still looking at Krishnin’s body.

‘There was only one shot though,’ said Cyril. ‘At least I think there was… wasn’t there?’

‘Don’t you worry your little civil servant’s head about it,’ said O’Dale, tutting at Shining who was still retching. ‘You going to be all right?’

Shining nodded, though he was by no means sure that was true.

Only time would tell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: POTENTIAL

‘He’s new!’ said Shining, looking at Jamie. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘I give him a week before he defects,’ Goss replied.

‘Oh no,’ insisted Shining, ‘not this one; he’s got potential.’

I felt detached. Not quite able to focus. I sat there on Jamie Goss’ sofa and held my hands out in front of me. They were solid now. This was the real world. Yes. Not that strange dreamlike place we had just been in. This was solid… I am the Insubstantial Man, I suddenly thought, with no idea as to why.

‘Glad you think so,’ said Jamie. ‘He seems dead from the neck up to me.’

Eventually, Shining and I left, taking the Tube back to the office. For the whole journey, he talked to me in a calm, matter-of-fact tone about the work that Section 37 undertook. He discussed previous cases; nothing concrete, just a line here and there, little jewels of madness scattered all over the conversation as if I were supposed to be able to make sense of them. In a way I did.

I couldn’t quite understand why the things he told me seemed acceptable. Because they weren’t. They were ridiculous… The Haunting of Black Rod, his time in China fighting a dragon god… Rubbish. Fantastical tales that I would dismiss in a novel let alone in real life. And yet somehow I didn’t dismiss them. I just nodded, overwhelmed but wholly credulous. I believed every single word.

‘You know,’ he said as we climbed out of Wood Green station onto High Road, ‘it’s so refreshing to be able to tell you all these things and not just have you laugh. Or call the emergency services. My career has tended to lack receptive audiences.’

He went into the mobile phone shop beneath the office. Apparently his phone kept ringing at four in the morning; I got the impression he was trying to decide whether it was a malfunction or whether it was actually possessed. I decided to leave him to it. I wanted a moment of silence, to try to take in everything that had happened.

I wasn’t to get it.

‘I suppose you think that was clever,’ said an elderly lady who had just left the shop.

‘I’m sorry?’ I had never met her before in my life. Shining had just ushered her out of the door and right into me. Was it some form of test? Was this another of his strange agents?

‘It wasn’t clever you know,’ she continued. ‘Not one bit of it. It may have solved the immediate problem but you’ll never believe the price.’

‘I really don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about,’ I said, looking over her shoulder and through the shop window. Shining was talking to the owner who was waving his arms around as if besieged by the most unreasonable man in the world.

‘You don’t remember, of course,’ she said. ‘But I can change that. Would you like me to change that?’

‘I think you have the wrong person,’ I replied.

She gripped me by the arm and suddenly my head was spinning. I stumbled slightly, toppling back against the street railings, the old woman’s grip remaining utterly firm.

‘Feel it now?’ she said. ‘Remember?’

And I did. I remembered everything, the numbers station, Krishnin, Operation Black Earth… everything that had just happened and the desperate, stupid thing I had done to avoid it all.

‘There is no simple reset button in this universe,’ she continued. ‘You might think so. You might think you’ve done a good thing here today. And maybe you have. A lot of lives have been spared after all, a lot of people saved… But the cost!’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, finding it hard to catch my breath. ‘It worked. Krishnin’s gone. It’s all gone. Job done.’

‘For now. But one day… one day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you and all your friends. Time doesn’t like being pushed, boy. It pushes back. And when it does, you’re going to come crawling to me, because that’s the day that only I’ll be able to help you.’

‘Yeah? Well, leave me your card and I’ll give you a call.’

She chuckled at that, or the thing inside her did.

‘Oh, we’ll keep in touch young man, don’t worry about that. We’re going to become good friends, you and I. When the fallout descends, I’m going to be the best friend you’ve got, the only one that will be able to keep you alive. Remember that. The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg.’

She let go of my arm and wandered off. After a couple of steps she seemed to become unsteady on her feet, turned around, looked at me in confusion and then meandered on.

What girl? I wondered. What had she… it… meant?

‘Making friends?’ said Shining, having come back out of the shop.

‘Apparently.’

I looked at him with new – or perhaps that should be old eyes – remembering everything I had experienced over the last few days. ‘In the Clown Service I think you need all the friends you can get.’

‘The what?’

‘That’s what my old section head called Section 37, the Clown Service.’

He laughed. ‘I rather like that! Embrace the insults they throw at you, Ludwig – that’s my advice. Come on, let’s see what the rest of the day brings. One thing you’ll learn soon enough, life in the Clown Service is many things, but it’ll never be quiet.’

I knew that only too well.

He opened the door and began to climb the stairs to the office. I followed on behind, suddenly struck by an urge.

‘I wonder if Tamar’s in?’ I asked. I thought about her, her ferocious love for the head of my new section, the indomitable strength of her. I wanted to see her again. And April, and Derek… all of us had done this together.

‘Tamar?’ Shining asked, turning to me as he unlocked the office door. ‘Who’s Tamar? Don’t think I know anyone of that name. Armenian?’

The girl. That’s what it had said – whatever that thing was that seemed to dog me at every step, hopping from one body to another.

‘Tamar. Your…’ I shrugged, ‘…bodyguard. She lives upstairs.’

He shook his head. ‘The upstairs flat’s been empty for years; the landlord always struggles to rent it. I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m afraid.’

He stepped into the office and I just stood there, staring up at the next landing.

The girl? She’s only the tip of the iceberg… One day you will learn that everything we do in life has consequences. And the consequences of what you’ve done today will break you all…