Jago (56 page)

By the Gate House, she found James. He was with the boy he’d told to get out of the village. He hadn’t managed to save even one soul either.

‘Susan,’ he said, ‘thank God you’re okay.’

‘Am I?’

She saw the flash of despair in his face, and read his thought that she had cracked on him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had too much to dream tonight, you know? Jago’s fucking everything in sight. I mean that most sincerely, folks.’

‘It’s chaos all over,’ James said. ‘There must be dozens dead.’

Teddy coughed and bent over. He was badly hurt, nasty bruises on his face and hands.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Ask a policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried to get word to Garnett.’

The blue fireball bounced in the rutted driveway, and the ass-boy leaped past them to catch it, dribbling it like a basketball and taking a shot at the face of one of his friends.

‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ James said.

‘You hope.’

I
nside Ferg’s head, things were tight. The aliens barged into the school disco just as the smooch track started. Ferg was dancing with Jessica, getting a hand on her bum for the first time, when three of them sat at a table nearby. They had blank faces and zipless leather jackets, dark glasses like shields. As they passed the brown-paper-wrapped bottle between them, he saw their little fingers didn’t bend. Jessica’s hands were climbing his back as the number got worked up, and he was tongue-kissing her. Fourteen and thirteen and they were only on tongues. Ferg was getting desperate. Everyone he knew did it, or said they did. Jessica was already well covered. He felt the points of her breasts against the Sex Pistols T-shirt he’d got down the market. The aliens were making comments. Since he started having his hair in a mohican, he’d been getting a lot of comments. Use yer head for a loo brush? Big heap medicine, ugh! Think you’re hard, do you? Jessica didn’t notice the aliens. He wiped her hair back from one ear, and licked her neck. His tongue froze as he saw what he’d uncovered. She didn’t have an ear, just a round hole covered by thin, veined, vibrating membrane. Her hand pushed his face away, all her fingers bent but the little one. She shoved him, laughing like a back-masked message. The aliens caught him, pulling him off the dance floor, dragging him through the push-bar exit into the fish-and-old-newspapers-smelling alley by the club. Two of the aliens pinned him to a wall while the third punched him in the face, chest and belly. As the alien’s fists went in, his face started to slip, wax mask cracking, peeling away from his lizard skin. Gristle in Ferg’s nose broke, and he was wheezing through bloody snot, tasting blood trickle into his throat. While aliens beat the piss out of him, Jessica stood by the exit, watching, thoughtlessly picking patches of skin off her arms, rubbing her itching scales. The aliens holding his shoulders dropped him, and he slumped down hard, doubling up as he puked thin gruel through his ruined nose. The aliens had lead-weighted moon boots under their grey jeans, and they kicked him while he was down…

In the pain swirl, he felt his cheekbones crushed, his jaw clamped tightly shut. He was cooped up in Dolar’s van, trying to drive, but the dope-smoke between his face and the windscreen was thick as the atmosphere on Venus. He’d been on beer and wine and gear for days, and his body wasn’t working properly. His tongue, too large in his mouth, flopped like wet leather. There was a vile taste leaking from his tongue, but his sense of smell was dead and gone. An ache in the small of his back clawed its way up his spine, boring under his shoulderblades, settling around his neck like a collar. He clung to the steering wheel as if it were the edge of a cliff, fingernails torn and bloody. Dolar sang, Jessica complained, Mike Toad told foul jokes, Syreeta criticized, Pam giggled, and Salim, usually quiet, shrieked in agony. Ferg leaned forwards, smoke parting before his face, and got close to the glass, trying to make out the road. The van rolled on, gobbling up white lines. Outside, the smoke was just as thick, although Ferg could see the taillights of the next car winking in the white-grey cloud. They were pressing the upper edge of the speed limit and the van’s capabilities, but, bumper to bumper with speeding vehicles, Ferg couldn’t slow down. The van was like the middle carriage between two belching steam engines, rushing along the rails towards a bridge that might or might not be standing over a chasm. The cassette player was broken, spewing out loops of brown tape and mangling the theme from
Easy Rider.
Tape was bunching around Ferg’s knees, writhing like a worm. Ferg had a bad nosebleed, blood streaming around his mouth. The pressure inside the van was building, and he heard the sea in his ears, pounding brutally against shingles. The sea sound rose, drowning out the others in the van. Ferg bit his tongue, trying to feel something as the breakers became a painful roar. The smoky atmosphere pressed on the sides of his head, and Ferg felt his inner ear inflate like a balloon. The speedometer ground to its fullest extent and broke. The van was bumped from behind, pushed into the car ahead. The pain in his ears was a constant explosion. Something burst, and silence flooded into his head. Liquid trickled down from his earholes…

His ears and nose were clogged, as if plugged with gritty wax. Jessica sat cross-legged on the other side of their fire, mouth opening and closing silently like a goldfish’s. His paperback
Dune
was burning in with the scavenged firewood, cover shrinking, pages blackening one by one to ash. Jessica had a three-pointed fork stuck over the fire. Fat worms wriggled like live bait on each of the prongs, rudimentary faces tiny but bloated replicas of Jessica’s. Mouths screamed without noise as skins crisped to black, parting to reveal bulging pink fat. The trees around crowded over, and mechanical dinosaurs strode through them. An Iron Insect stood at the edge of the clearing, heavy head swivelling, burning searchlight raising hedges of fire among the tents. Jessica passed him the trident and made a sign with her hand, urging him to eat. He raised the forked food, still alive, to his mouth and could not smell the burned flesh. He bit off the head of the first sausage-worm. It was like taking in a mouthful of molten lead. The food burned, eating away his teeth and tongue in a moment, melding his jaw to his skull, flooding his throat. Jessica rolled up her sleeve, pushing her bracelets to her elbow, and thrust her porky forearm into the fire. As Ferg’s mouth cooled to deadness, the girl’s skin turned black in patches and parted, showing lumpy flesh and muscle underneath. The fat spit silently, and her meat cooked on the bone. Now the wax was over Ferg’s mouth too, solid like a welded-on mask…

He was stumbling through the woods, fleeing the Iron Insect. He couldn’t hear it, but he could feel the ground shake as it took each deliberate, heavy step. Trees got in the way, and he slammed into them, jarring his already wounded head. He’d been hurt badly inside, bones cracked, his brain probably leaking into his broken nose and senseless mouth. There wasn’t even pain any more. The ground got steeper, and he had to use his hands to pull himself up. His shaven scalp itched where he’d once had hair. He was climbing now, an almost sheer rockface. The Iron Insect slowed, forced to crunch out holds for its clawed feet before it could lift its weight. Ferg hauled himself up, gripping a well-anchored bush, and lifted his head above the crest of the cliff, chinning the edge. He scrambled over and, exhausted, lay down, looking up at the night sky. A dart-shaped spaceship crossed the grinning face of the moon, tiny drones spurting from it, spiralling towards the earth. From his position, he saw fires all over Alder, hovering aliens hunting and exterminating humans. It was a rout, Earth was doomed. He wasn’t alone on the hillside. A boy sat on a rock, watching. Salim turned to Ferg, and moonlight showed a deep hole displacing his features, as if someone had sunk an iron into his face. He painfully hauled himself to his feet, arms extended. A mechanical device, like a spider with blinking lights, stuck to his neck, legs digging beneath his skin. The boy had been brought back from the dead by the aliens. Allison lurched out of the darkness, face chalk-white and gaunt, low-cut and wasp-waisted black shroud trailing behind her bare feet, arms extended too, black fingernails reaching. The zombies piled on to him, pressing him down, forcing his head into position, making him look up at the towering shape of the Iron Insect. The cobra-neck appendage bobbed and pointed at him. The zombies dug into his stomach, freeing his guts, pressing faces to his wounds. Allison held up his liver and took a bite out of it, red dribbling down her bone-white chin, eyes glowing enormous in her cavernous skull sockets. The Iron Insect’s antenna was directly in front of him, a few inches from his eyes. There was an aperture in the antenna. He’d seen these things spread fire with their death ray. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids were paralysed. A shutter within the aperture opened, and light flooded his vision. His face burned, and his eyes burst…

In the dark, Ferg felt the tightening hood around his head. All other senses were gone. His head was getting smaller and coming loose from his neck. In the dark, the aliens swarmed, exulting in their triumph. The alien giant with the killing, crushing hand held fast. There were unseen shapes around him, unheard voices. He felt, but did not hear, the final snap.

‘W
here’d she go?’ Mike Toad asked, shaken.

Allison stood up and brushed herself off. The ground where Jazz had been was finely dusted with chalk. There was a murder-victim outline, but no other trace of the girl.

‘Where?’

Allison looked at the Toad, and he shut up.

‘Transported,’ she said, liking the sound of it. As us all shall be.’

The Toad looked doubtful.

‘’Tis our reward,’ she reassured him. ‘Faithful will sit at His right hand.’

Terry was on all fours, hairy back burst through his shirt, thick fur all over his face. He was fidgety, gouging the shingle with his claws.

First Wendy, then Ben, now Jazz. With each passing, she was stronger. She was putting aside weights that anchored her to her old life. She was being purified, like the Sisters of the Agapemone. But she was stronger than they, fit to sit by the throne of the lion, not to bleat in the arms of the lamb. Her Beloved wasn’t meek and mild but the terrible scourge that swept all before Him away in flame.

On the hillside it was quiet, but she heard the wailing from Alder, wafting up in the still night. The souls of the transported lingered like fireflies. The armies were assembled, and the first skirmishes had been fought. With Ben’s passing, she’d won a field promotion. She was now a general, second only to the Beloved.

Mike Toad wanted to say something, but had nothing to say. His aura was sickly, congealing yellow around his heart. He was coming to the end of his purpose. He was becoming one of the weights that must be set aside. Terry howled at the stars. The Toad cringed.

The first pink of dawn showed. Their night on the mountain was nearly over. Soon, it would be time to go among the multitudes and spread the word. But first, she must lose another weight.

‘Mike Toad,’ she said, pulling him around by his chin to face her, ‘tell us a story, tell us a joke.’

He shook his head, and she nodded slowly, contradicting him.

‘Youm a funny boy. Make I laugh.’

He gulped. Terry stopped howling and cocked an ear to listen. Allison squeezed, thumb digging into Mike’s cheek, nail pressing a crescent of red under his eye.

‘Come on, boy.’

She pulled her hand away. Mike swallowed. He knew she meant it.

‘No… wait… right…’

She watched him collect himself.

‘My girlfriend, right, she’s so fat…’

Allison folded her arms. Mike was having trouble getting his joke straight in his mind, let alone his mouth.

‘Fat, right? Yeah, really fat… anyway, she was going through customs at the airport…’

Terry was bunching up his shoulders, muscles tense, head thrust forwards. Allison put a hand on his head, fur prickling under her palm.

‘…and they pull her aside... searching, no, looking... looking for drugs…’

Terry growled in the back of his throat, almost below the range of human ears. Allison felt his readiness to pounce. He was like an Olympic runner on his marks, knees bent, thighs and calves ready to pound ground.

‘…so they strip-search her… they take down her knickers, and what do you think they find?’

Allison didn’t think Mike Toad would get very far. He didn’t have the legs for it.

‘Ten pounds of crack.’

In the pause, nobody laughed. Terry rose, shoulders expanding, fur standing like porcupine spines. Mike turned, looking for the path. Terry’s growl dribbled out.

Allison nodded, and Mike began running.

‘Fetch,’ she said, slapping Terry on.

The boy made it into the woods, and Terry bounded after him.

Ten pounds of crack. Allison thought about it. As the noises of the chase disappeared, she got it, and let slip a low chuckle. Very funny.

O
nce, at a party, Paul had seen a steroid braggart crush a tennis ball, rubberized guts exploding through his fingers. When the Green Man broke Ferg’s head, his huge fist made exactly the same sound, spurts of red gushing through gaps between leaves and wood. On the verandah, Jessica whimpered. The Green Girl giggled and clapped. A spray of blood struck Maskell’s face, standing out day-glo against his green skin. Paul had no more disgust in him. Even his pain had receded to a blunt, constant ache.

Ferg’s limp body hung like a dead rabbit from the Green Man’s hand, legs trailing the lawn. Maskell’s fist still shrank. Everything below Ferg’s neck fell, blood gushing from the stump where his head had been. The Green Man opened his hand and scraped his palm on the side of the house, leaving a pink and red patch.

Jeremy, not struggling, was held by his mother and sister. Long dawn shadows stretched across the lawn, light in the sky. As the sun came up, the Green Man seemed more a natural thing. Maskell was obviously refreshed by the light, a carved smile standing out on his face. The bastard must be photosynthesizing. Paul wondered if a ton of Paraquat would do any good.