The Storm (10 page)

The ground broke and reformed, sounding as if the whole world was cracking its knuckles. A bridge of rock rose from the drenched beach, resembling the spine of some huge beast pushing through the skin of the earth. It snaked up across the furrowed land where this little town had once sat. Its architect, Schiller, twisted the air with his burning fingers, invisible ropes reshaping rock and sand and soil until there was a clear path away from the sea.

Only when he had finished did he begin his transformation, the flames guttering out like a gas stove in the wind until the person who stood there was not an angel but a boy once more. He managed a weary smile before his legs gave out and he tumbled on to the ridged back of his own creation. Rilke picked herself up from where she had been kneeling, her knees rubbed raw from the vibrations in the ground, and walked to him. When she helped him into a sitting position, another lock of his hair fell loose. It was no longer blond, she realised, but grey.

‘You did well, little brother,’ she said, stroking his cheek. He was still so cold, as if each time the fire left him it robbed his body of a little more heat. ‘You wiped it clean. Just listen, listen to what you’ve done.’

He did, and for a while they both sat and absorbed the quiet. The only sound was the soft lapping of the ocean, reduced to a dog that whimpered at their heels. There were no screams, not even any alarms. Schiller’s wave had done its job well.

‘Can we rest now?’ Schiller asked in a whisper. His eyes were closed, and he twitched like a dreaming puppy. She shook his shoulders, bringing him back. Why did he have to sleep when there was so much work to be done?

‘Soon,’ she said. She tugged on him until he responded, clambering to his feet. She put her arm under him, propping him up with her body. It was hard work, and after a few seconds she gave in. ‘Okay, we can rest for a while. But not here, we should find somewhere safe.’

‘Safe?’ came a voice from behind her. She looked to see Jade there, sitting on the raised beach next to the two boys. She looked like a badly painted puppet, her eyes too big, her mouth slack, her body limp. Rilke had almost forgotten that the others existed. Did she even need them? When her angel hatched she and Schill could change the world by themselves. They didn’t need to be held back by anyone. But for now it made sense to keep them here. They might come in useful, especially the new boy who was on the verge of waking.

‘It won’t be long before they come after us,’ Rilke said, taking a step along the stone bridge, dragging Schiller beside her.

‘The police?’

‘Yes. And others too. The army.’
And Daisy,
she thought but didn’t say. The little girl had to be close to changing as well. Rilke didn’t think it had already happened, though. She would have felt it. No, they were resting, Daisy and Brick and Cal and Adam. She tried to send her mind out, the way she had been able to back in Fursville. She could feel an uncomfortable wooden bench, could smell something old and dusty, could see strange-coloured light seeping through big windows.
A church
, she understood with a sharp intake of breath. She’d spent enough time in one to know that much. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe they’d hear the stories about the avenging angels, maybe they’d finally see what they had to do.

And if not? If they came here and tried to stop Schiller?

Rilke tried to imagine what would happen if two angels fought each other. That alone would be enough to bring the world to its knees. And was Schiller powerful enough to fight Daisy? She was just a little girl, but there was an inner strength in her that her brother did not possess.

‘I don’t think I can carry him any further,’ said Jade. ‘He’s too cold.’

‘You can,’ said Rilke. ‘Just to the top of the hill, just until we find shelter.’

She didn’t wait for a reply. Jade would do as she was told, Marcus too. She made her way from the sea with Schiller in her arms, each step a challenge. It reminded her of the morning she had arrived at the theme park, a morning that felt like a lifetime ago but was, what,
two days
? Like everything, time was broken now. Those two days were a lifetime. How little she’d known back then. The world was just the world, and the people in it just people.

The thought was so absurd that she laughed. Schiller glanced up at her through the slits of his sleepy eyes. He smiled back, and she noticed that one of his front teeth was missing. Her stomach knotted, her skin was suddenly cold.
It’s killing him
. No. It was making him stronger. How could it not? It was making him more powerful than anything else in the world. It was making him a god. And yet still a voice called out to her, maybe hers, maybe not:
It’s killing him, it’s using him, it’s eating him from the inside.

‘Shut up,’ she hissed beneath her breath. Schiller heard her, frowning. ‘Watch where you’re going, brother,’ she said to him, only so she wouldn’t have to look at the gaping socket in his gum where his tooth had once sat. So what if it was using him, so what if his human body fell to pieces. Once the flesh dropped away there would be only fire and fury.

They staggered on in silence, making their way along the crest of broken rock. The further they went, the more they saw of the destruction Schiller had wrought. To their left was another sea, this one made up of bricks and concrete and bodies, buoyed up on silt and seawater. Smoke rose from three or four places. She wondered if there was anyone left alive over there, then she thought of the wall of water that had crunched into the town like the fist of God. Nothing could have survived that. They wouldn’t have even known it was happening.

After half a mile or so they reached the end of the bridge that Schiller had pulled from the earth. It became a jagged mouth of teeth, and beyond that a mess of crumbs. Rilke stepped from it into a field of patchy grass, the ground damp but firm. It was so flat that even here she could see the grey line of the sea, as if it was peeking up over the horizon to make sure they had really gone. She half expected it to duck back down again, hiding behind the ruined town.

‘Can we rest now?’ asked Schiller. ‘Please, Rilke, I don’t feel very well.’

She didn’t look at him, just scanned the field for shelter. There was a fence nearby, trampled into the mud. A dead horse lay tangled in the wire and wood. It must have tried to flee when it heard the thunder of the ocean, she thought, and she felt a pity for the creature that was surprising. She shook the emotion away –
emotions are for the humans, Rilke, not for you
– her eyes settling on the only structure she could see for miles, other than the telephone poles. It was a windmill, one that had lost its sails.

She set off towards it, dragging the others behind her as though she was pulling a cart. Her shadow led the way, still long, sweeping over the grass like a dark cloud.
Like the man in the storm,
she thought, and it made her stomach go funny again. If he was here for the same reason the angels were, then why hadn’t he tried to communicate with them? Didn’t he have instructions, commands? Or maybe he had, but they couldn’t hear him. Maybe that would only happen when the angels had hatched. She thought about asking Schiller if he’d heard – felt – anything from the man in the storm, but he was so weak she didn’t think his answer would make much sense even if he did know. Better to get him inside, let him rest, then ask.

It took longer than she thought to reach the windmill, the flat ground making it seem closer than it actually was. By the time they had crossed a small dyke the sun had shifted and there was a noise approaching from the horizon, a deep rumble that started like thunder but which turned out to be a helicopter. Rilke put her hand up to shield the blinding light of day, seeing the black speck hover over the town. It was like a vulture, circling over a corpse along with the gulls that were already crowding there, huge sweeping grey clouds of them searching for scraps. That’s all that was left over there, scraps of flesh, of bone, and come tomorrow even they would be gone. The helicopter banked, retreated, its sonic thumps fading until they were lost beneath the rapid beat of her heart.

‘It’s so quiet,’ said Marcus. ‘It’s like the world has been switched off.’

Rilke nodded, then walked the last few yards to the windmill door. It was locked, but it was old, and after a couple of kicks it wobbled open. The stench of damp and rot wafted out at them, but at least they would be hidden. She let Jade and Marcus go first, carrying the new boy inside. Then she ushered Schiller through the door. She followed him into the stale darkness, peering once more out across the land towards the sea. The helicopter was gone, but something was watching them, she could feel its eyes dancing up and down her spine. She looked up into the flawless blue sky, chewing her lip. Then she pushed the little wooden door closed, turning to find herself in a small, circular room. The single window was boarded up badly, beams of amber-coloured light straining to reach the floor, revealing a sculpture of cogs and old lumber but very little else. Schiller had already crumpled against the wall, his head in his hands. Jade and Marcus laid the new kid down next to the machinery, rubbing their arms and shivering.

‘We rest here for an hour,’ said Rilke, impatience making her foot tap. She didn’t like it in here. She thought she would have felt safe, concealed, but it was the opposite of that, as though there was a great big flag flying from the top of the windmill, one that said ‘We’re in here, send a missile.’ And that’s what they would do, if they knew the truth. They’d send a plane, a dozen planes, and blow this whole field into oblivion. If Schiller was awake, and transformed, it would be fine. But if he was asleep, if he didn’t hear them coming, then it would all be over before it had really even begun. ‘An hour,’ she repeated when Schiller started to protest. ‘I’ll wake you.’

The others settled down, but she stayed standing. She’d been awake all night too, and she knew that if her head so much as dropped against either of her shoulders then sleep would have her. She paced back and forth next to the door, watching as first Schiller went under, then Jade, and finally, a few minutes later, Marcus, curled up like a hedgehog beneath the window. Pathetic, all of them, so much work to do and they only cared about resting. If her angel was ready, if it had hatched, she’d force them to move on. Nobody would dare argue with her.

Schiller twitched, muttering something in his sleep. Rilke cocked her head, trying to work out what he had said. He wasn’t usually one for sleep talking. She knew that from the countless nights he’d been too scared in his own room and come to sleep in her bed, or in the chair, or on her floor, wherever she let him curl up. Once he was asleep, he was usually out till morning. He said something again, and suddenly she began to wonder if he was sleeping at all, or if perhaps his mind was somewhere else. Hadn’t it happened before, back at Fursville? Daisy had talked about it, about how they could meet in their dreams. What if Schiller was with her now? What if they were talking?

She moved towards him, ready to kick him awake. Then she hesitated. Wouldn’t it be better to find out? She wondered what she would see if she sat down and drifted off. Would Daisy be there? Brick and Cal too, trying to talk Schiller round. Or would she see the man in the storm? Would she finally hear what he wanted them to do?

There were no sounds from outside, no whump of helicopter blades, no roar of planes and missiles. They would probably be okay here for a little while. She sat down next to her brother, checked to make sure no one was watching, then rested her head on his shoulder. It didn’t take sleep long to find her, sweeping across the field, pouring into the windmill, smothering her. She felt an instant of panic, like the moment a roller coaster stops at the top of the slope, the anticipation of falling –
into what, though, and who will catch me?
– then she dropped into darkness and silence.

There were more people here now, in her kingdom of ice. She could sense their arrival, like birds alighting on a branch, making it sway almost imperceptibly. The ice cubes clinked, bouncing off each other, each one still full of other people’s lives. The whole world swam with liquid movement, the constant burble and splash of a swimming pool.

‘Hello?’ she said. Was it the new kid, the one called Howie? He was still here, somewhere, lost in the maze of icy mirrors. She’d heard him calling out, shouting for his mum and his brother. ‘Say something, please, I know you’re there.’

‘Daisy?’ The voice came from right behind her and she spun around. The creature she saw there was so beautiful, and yet so terrifying, that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It stood tall in robes of diamond-white flame, its wings curling overhead. It was so bright that she turned away, before realising that she wasn’t really staring at it, not with her eyes anyway. She looked back, seeing the creature’s face, recognising it.

‘Schiller?’ she said. It wasn’t his face, and yet it was. It shimmered in the light, like a reflection in a sun-drenched, wind-rippled pool. But there was no doubt it was him, because as soon as she said his name he broke into a huge, blinding smile. ‘It
is
you. How are you here?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and even though he looked like his angel his voice was high and soft, so much like Rilke’s. ‘I’m asleep, I think.’

Of course. It had happened before, not with Schiller but with Brick and Cal. On their first night in Hemmingway they had shared a dream. It didn’t seem like something that could actually happen, but then
nothing
that had happened was like something that could actually happen. Besides, if they all had angels inside them then why wouldn’t they be able to communicate like this? There had to be some kind of link between them now, one that didn’t bother with things like distance and time and space.

‘Are you okay?’ she said. ‘Tell me what it’s like, the angel.’

Schiller shrugged, his wings lurching up then down. The action seemed so silly that she giggled. This was the first time she had heard his voice, she realised. The first time she had met him, really, because he had been frozen for so long.
No, you heard his voice, remember,
a part of her brain said.
In Hemmingway, when he spoke and ended that place, a single word that smashed a hundred people into ash. You were unconscious, but you still heard it.

‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘But they were going to hurt us, hurt my sister. I didn’t know what else to do.’

It’s okay,
she thought.
You didn’t have a choice.

He shrugged again, but this time his mouth was turned so low that it looked drawn on, an upside-down smiley.

‘Have you spoken to it?’ Daisy asked.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t really have words, just, I don’t know, like feelings. It tries to show me things, but I don’t always understand.’

‘Did it show you why it’s here?’

‘The man in the storm,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘That’s what I keep seeing.’

Daisy nodded. She was the same. How many times had she been pulled towards that particular ice cube, the one filled with a furious darkness, the one where
he
lived? It loomed there even as she thought about it, cracking towards her with the sound of breaking glaciers. But she knew how to push it away now, and she did so gently, insistently.

‘Rilke says it’s because it’s telling us what to do, the man in the storm, it’s one of us. She thinks we have to follow its example, destroy things.’

He was shaking his head as he spoke, and Daisy could sense his reluctance.

‘Your sister is wrong,’ she said. ‘She’s made a mistake. A terrible one. We’re not here to join it, we’re here to fight it.’

As if in response, she felt something moving in her chest. Well, it wasn’t so much her chest as something deeper, someplace she couldn’t quite identify. It was like a pressure there, as though her heart was about to burst, but in a good way, like waking up and remembering it’s Christmas Day. It was her angel. It was close to hatching.

‘I don’t know,’ said Schiller, and there was something in his voice. Fear, maybe. ‘Rilke’s usually right about things. She’s clever like that. I’m not clever, I just do what she says.’

‘You
are
clever,’ she said. ‘Your sister’s a bully; you shouldn’t let her push you around.’

The space around her grew cooler, as if the ice cubes were leaching heat from the air. Then somebody else spoke, a voice just as cold.

‘I knew it.’

Daisy turned to see another figure. This one was definitely human, although that same blue fire burned where her heart should be. Rilke didn’t step so much as float towards them, her face so twisted by anger that she could have been a feral.

‘I knew I’d find you here, little brother.’

‘Rilke, we were only talking,’ said Daisy. Rilke swept down on them like a bird of prey, glaring at her. She wasn’t the girl that Daisy remembered; this was almost like a dream person, somebody that didn’t look quite themselves but who was definitely them.
Of course, because she isn’t really here, and neither am I, I’m with Cal and Brick and Adam.
That knowledge made her feel safer – surely Rilke couldn’t hurt her in this not-real place.

‘Don’t listen to her, Schill,’ said Rilke. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She hasn’t seen what we’ve seen.’

She saw it now, in the ice, a wall of water that trembled across the land. For a moment she felt it too, that huge weight of darkness swallowing the sky, falling down on her, and she had to push herself out of the sensation before it made her scream.

‘Oh, Schiller, no,’ she said. ‘All those people. You didn’t have to hurt them, you didn’t have to do that.’

‘You’re wrong, Daisy,’ spat Rilke. ‘He did. Don’t you see it yet? Hasn’t it gotten into your stupid little head? You can protest all you like, but sooner or later you’ll be forced to see the truth. He called us, the man in the storm. He wants us to join him, he wants us to help him cleanse the world.’

‘No,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re
wrong
, Rilke. Please, why won’t you see that?’ She turned to Schiller, silently pleading for him to stand up to his sister. But even though he burned like a giant sentinel of molten glass, he could not look either of them in the eye. ‘Please.’ She felt so powerless, so small. Why couldn’t she be like Schiller right now, why couldn’t her angel do something to help her? If it had hatched, then Rilke would have to listen to her.

‘Don’t threaten me,’ said Rilke, even though Daisy didn’t realise she had. ‘You will change soon, but don’t even think about getting in my way. I won’t hesitate to kill you. Schiller won’t hesitate, isn’t that right.’

It wasn’t a question, and after a moment of uncomfortable fidgeting Schiller nodded.

‘And it isn’t just him any more. We’ve got another one, ready to turn.’

‘Howie,’ said Daisy, remembering the voice she’d heard. Rilke’s expression flickered, unsure. She glanced around at the kaleidoscope of ice, as if she could see him there.

‘He’s ours,’ she hissed. ‘You hear me? And if you’re listening, Howie, then remember this – if I think you’re going to turn against me when you hatch, then I’ll just smash in your skull before you wake up. Understand?’

How could she be so
horrid
? Daisy thought. And the answer was clear enough:
she’s insane, she is totally and utterly crazy
. It had started long before all this. Daisy had seen it inside the girl’s head, terrible things – a mad mum, and the bad man, the doctor, whose breath smelled of coffee, whose hands were rough. Poor, poor Rilke, it wasn’t her fault. It had scratched away at the foundations of her mind and the Fury had made it so much worse. Everything was crumbling now. Daisy could almost see it in the girl’s face, the way her features seemed to grow and shrink like some hideous painting warping in the cold. She was falling apart from the inside.

‘Leave her alone, Rilke,’ another voice, and this one so,
so
welcome. Daisy turned to see Cal there, or at least a shimmering dream shape that looked like him. Brick was close behind, and Adam too, floating amongst the constantly shifting sea of ice.

‘Oh and the
hero
returns,’ Rilke said. ‘As self-righteous and arrogant as ever. Go away, Cal, nobody wants you here.’

‘Yeah? I didn’t see your name on the door, Rilke,’ he replied. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to leave Schiller alone,’ she said. ‘Leave us all alone. Let us do what we’re here to do. I don’t care if you want to hide away in a church, wait out the end days cowering in each other’s arms. But you
will not
stand between us and our duty. Do you hear me? I mean it, Daisy, if I find out you’ve been talking to Schiller again – any of us again – I’ll finish you.’

‘But you’re wrong!’ Daisy shouted, and the movement of the ice grew more agitated, the giant cubes crashing against each other. ‘You’re wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!’ As she spoke the pressure in her chest grew. She felt like a can of fizzy drink that had been shaken, one that was about to be opened.

‘Am I?’ Rilke seemed to chew on something, her dream face expanding, deflating, like a pair of lungs. ‘Then maybe it’s time we found out for sure.’

‘What do you mean?’ Daisy asked. Rilke’s smile was loose and wet, a clown’s smile. She looked at Schiller, then behind her to three more figures that Daisy hadn’t even seen arrive. It was Jade and Marcus, and between them stood the new boy, Howie. They all had that same heatless fire blazing in their chests. Rilke turned back, her eyes small and black and full of something that Daisy didn’t understand, something utterly human and yet completely alien. For the first time Daisy realised that the angel inside Rilke was probably screaming the truth at her, trying to make her understand, in a language that none of them could ever hope to hear. She felt sorry for it, felt its frustration. If only there was a way for them to know once and for all why they were here, and why they had been chosen.

‘But there is,’ said Rilke, plucking her thoughts once again with icy fingers. ‘Don’t you see, we just have to go there.’

Go where?
Daisy wondered, and once more it came for her, the storm in the ice, crashing through the floe in a hail of splinters. She looked and saw the man there, the beast, wrapped in a spiralling cloak of debris, its mouth open, devouring everything it could, turning substance into absence. It rolled its dead eyes towards her as if it knew she was there, and in the thunder of its voice she heard laughter. She shoved it away with the fingers of her mind, silently screaming
no no no no no.

‘Yes, Daisy. It’s the only way for you to learn.’ Rilke’s smile grew even wider, until it seemed too big even for her head. She began to retreat, pulling her burning brother along with her. ‘When we wake we go there, to the man in the storm, and we ask him.’