Empire Of Salt (45 page)

I realised they were swarming rats.

It was raining heavily; water gushed down the pavements and the road into the gutters. There'd been a lot of that lately.

There were rats on the road too ñ all on one side, the lane for city bound traffic, which was deserted. The road out of Manchester, on the other hand, was jammed solid. I could see the people in the cars ñ wild, terrified faces, fright and fury mixed, fists pounding windows, dashboards, steering wheels, making their horns blare and blare and blare.

The rain intensified until the road blurred. I stepped back from the window, let the curtains fall back into place. My stomach felt hollow and tight.

We had a television there, but I hadn't seen the news in months. We weren't allowed, and besides, we only wanted to watch things that would take our minds off our lives. I had no idea what had, or was, happening, only that something was very wrong.

Soon, I heard banging on the brothel's front door. I looked outside. It was Ilir, our owner. One of his sons came out of the door; he'd been left in charge. Ilir's black BMW was in the traffic jam, doors open. Ilir dragged his son to it. They slammed the doors; Ilir pounded the horn, but the traffic didn't budge. After a minute, they pulled into the deserted city bound lane. Other cars started following their example, and for a short time the traffic moved forward, but then locked up again. So many people, all trying to leave. Some of the other girls had started screaming, pounding on the doors. They'd abandoned us. They hadn't even turned us loose, just left us here.

People were running along the pavement, clutching their belongings, their children. Their eyes were wild.

An hour or so after Ilir and his son left, the answers started coming. Below Cheetham Hill are the Irwell and the Irk, two of the three rivers that run through Manchester. None are very deep; all have high banks. But water was washing up the street. Lapping up in slow, relentless waves.

Even then, I didn't really get it. It only really sank in when people started abandoning their cars.

It happened very quickly after that. Water washed round the wheels of the cars and rose higher. It lapped round their skirts. It poured over the pavements. Across the street, water flooded under the front door of the kebab house and across the floor. People were wading the torrents, then began climbing on top of the cars.

For a few minutes, I just watched. None of it felt real. It was like watching some bizarre art-house film. But nothing had felt real in that place for a long time. You couldn't let it, if you wanted to stay sane.

The water now started pouring over the crest of Cheetham Hill, and the rising waters now became a surge. A middle-aged Asian man fell over and was swept along, screaming for help. His arms flailed, and a toupee slipped off his head. I heard myself giggle; it was a jagged, ugly sound. I clapped a hand over my mouth. He went under and didn't come up.

Then I heard the girls downstairs begin screaming in earnest, and I realised the waters were entering the brothel.

We were all locked in our rooms overnight. Each one had an en-suite sink and toilet ñ for convenience, not comfort. The windows were all barred, so there was no escape. Even if the waters didn't flood the upper floors, I could still look forward to starvation.

My father had shown me how to pick a lock. I could've escaped my room easily enough on several occasions. The difficult part had always been what I would do then. There were two front doors, inner and outer, the inner triple-locked. And even if I'd got clear of that, where would I go with no papers, no passport, no way of getting a legitimate job?

But now the rules had changed.

I started searching, trying to find something I could use. The women downstairs were screaming. People on the street were screaming. I blocked it out. It didn't help me to hear it, wouldn't help me do this faster.

I tipped up the wastepaper basket. There were used condoms in it, slimy to the touch.

Ignore them, Papa said.

At last I found a paper clip.

I knelt by the door and set to work. It was a slow job. Trial and error. My fingers got sweaty and slipped on the metal.

Suddenly I realised something.

The girls downstairs had stopped screaming. All but one. Then suddenly, that too was choked off. And there was only silence from the ground floor.

Outside the street was silent. I went to the window. Stopped, and stared.

Most of it was underwater. Brown, dirty water had covered almost all the cars. The roofs of a few vehicles showed. There was a double-decker bus opposite, the top deck still above water. A dozen people were there, slack-skinned faces gazing into mine. Here and there, on the water, I saw reddish stains, dispersing slowly in the current.

There were two other women upstairs in the brothel ñ Marianna, who was about my age, was praying over and over in the next room. Marta, the youngest of the girls, was sobbing helplessly across the landing. She was only fifteen. A child. Tiny. Dark. Like my mother had been.

I ran back to the door, back to the lock. My fingers shook. I took a deep breath.

Panic is a choice, Papa used to say. You can decide not to be scared, not to panic. You can decide who's in charge.

So I chose to stay calm. I could still hear the rain pelting down outside, but I didn't look to see if the waters were still rising. I couldn't think about that. I had to act as if time was not a factor. I just kept working. Even when the thin carpet I knelt on grew cold and wet.

Marta was sobbing and screaming as well now. From next door, Marianna's prayers had blurred into a rising jumble of sound, fast turning into a wail.

The tumblers clicked.

I got the door open. Water filmed the landing, welling up from the flooded staircase. There was a fire extinguisher on the wall. I could smash the locks on the other girls' doors.

Then there were fresh screams. From outside.

I don't know why, but I went back to the window. I suppose I thought the worst of it was past. The door was open. I had time. Or, perhaps, there was something about the screams that alerted me.

When I look back, I believe going to the window probably saved my life. It forewarned me ñ just a little, but enough. Even so, as with much else, I wish I hadn't seen what I saw.

It was the double-decker. The waters were still rising, but the top windows and the people inside remained visible. They were scrambling away to the back end of the bus.

Someone was standing up in the water at the front end, near the staircase. At first I thought he was just fat. Then another figure rose up out of the water and I almost screamed. The bus passengers weren't so restrained. I could hear them from where I stood.

The second shape ñ its flesh resembled well-cooked meat, falling off the bone. I could see the bone of one arm showing through, and when the thing swivelled sideways for a second, showing its back, I saw the flesh coming away from the spine on each side, baring it like a moth's body when its wings are spread. Then it turned my way. God. God almighty. That face. Grinning because so much of the flesh was falling from the skull. And looking at me. The sockets of its eyes were empty. They glared; a greenish-yellow glow, bright. It started forward, the fat shape following ñ I saw now it wasn't fat, just bloated, from its drowning. And then a third figure rose up into view, climbing up the bus's flooded stairwell, and a fourth... all with those glowing eyes.

The passengers were still. There wasn't really anywhere to go in any case. The rotting thing seized one of them, a woman in her twenties, and bit into her neck. I heard her scream. The bloated figure grabbed her too and they pulled her down; blood sprayed up and splattered the windows.

It was over for them very quickly after that. Sometimes I think they were the lucky ones.

I just wish, before I turned away, I hadn't seen the child, hands and face against the glass, screaming...

But there was nothing I could do.

I grabbed the extinguisher off the wall and smashed the lock on Marta's door. She stumbled out, then shrieked again as she saw the flooded stairwell.

"What are we going to do?" It came out in a wail.

I pointed to the hatch in the ceiling. "Get into the loft, then out onto the roof."

Luckily I didn't have to tell her everything; she clambered onto the landing rail and I caught her legs, boosted her up. She pushed the hatch up, grabbed the edges and started wriggling up into the loft. I ran to Marianna's door and smashed the lock there too.

Marianna was on her knees praying. I dragged her to her feet and out onto the landing. The water there was ankle deep now.

"Climb!" I shouted to Marianna, and started clambering onto the banister. Marta reached down to grip my hands. Then her gaze drifted past me and her eyes widened.

I looked.

Wished I hadn't.

Down in the dark water, in the flooded stairwell, I could see movement. And lights. Pairs of yellow-green lights, rising towards the surface. And then I could see their faces.

Continued in Simon Bestwick's Tide of Souls,

from Abaddon.

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