The Storm (12 page)

‘You can, Schiller,’ she said, trying to lock the sobs inside her chest where they broke painfully against her ribs. ‘You’re strong, much stronger than you think, much stronger . . . So much stronger than I ever let you believe. You’re my brother, we’re made of the same things, you and I; anything I can do you can do too.’

The gunfire in the distance had stopped, but she could make out the rumble of a helicopter. It wouldn’t be long before the soldiers found them. She took Schiller’s hand, kissing his fingers.

‘Do this for me, little brother,’ she said. ‘Take us there. I know you can.’

‘She . . . she doesn’t want me to,’ he said.

Who?
she almost asked before answering her own question. ‘Daisy.’ And the white heat inside her made her ears ring. She was talking to him now –
how dare she –
countermanding Rilke’s orders, burrowing into his mind and poisoning his thoughts.

‘Ignore her, Schill, she doesn’t love you like I do.’

At this, Schiller’s eyes brightened. He squeezed her hand as best as he was able. It was like being gripped by a bird claw, so brittle she worried his fingers might snap off.

‘I
do
love you, little brother, more than anything.’

‘I love you too,’ he managed, coughing more blood.

‘So do this for me.’

She gripped him hard, then looked up at Marcus and Jade.

‘I don’t want to,’ said Jade, shuffling away on her backside and shaking her head. ‘I can’t do it any more.’

‘They’ll kill you,’ Rilke said. It didn’t matter, though, they didn’t need her. Let them kill her, it would be one less sheep for Rilke to shepherd. Marcus placed a hand on Schiller, clutching her brother’s shirt with white-knuckled fingers. He took hold of the new boy’s arm, then nodded.

‘You can do it, Schill,’ he said.

Rilke closed her eyes, pictured the storm that raged over London, and the creature who sucked out the rot of the world with that huge, unending breath.
Take us there,
she thought, directing the words into Schiller’s head.
Take us to him, I know you will
. And she did. There was not a single doubt in her mind. This is why they were here. He would save Schiller, he would save all of them. He was their guardian angel.

Schiller nodded, then he spoke, and once again the universe – time and space and all the spinning orbits of life – had no choice but to let them go.

Cal woke and assumed he was still dreaming, because Brick was sitting on the back pew of the church stroking Daisy’s hair. He was shivering against the cold of her, his skin almost blue, flecked with jewelled light from the windows. He must have sensed Cal waking, because he stood up, wiping the back of his hand over his nose.

‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘You saw her.’

Not
Was that a dream?
Or
Did we really meet there?
Cal shook the last few scraps of sleep from his head, pushed himself up only to feel as though he had been thrown into a pool of razors. He grunted, trying not to move, the pain finally settling in a supernova behind his forehead.

‘Ow,’ he said.
Understatement of the century
. ‘Don’t suppose you saw any painkillers on your travels?’

‘There is a first-aid kit in the rectory, like I said,’ said the vicar. Doug. Cal had almost totally forgotten about him. He sat where he had promised to sit, rubbing his legs as if to keep the blood flowing. Cal nodded a thank you to him, then looked at Brick. It took the bigger boy a moment to realise what was being asked of him, and he shook his head.

‘I went last time,’ he said. ‘You go.’ He glanced down at Daisy once more, and Cal could see how much he loved her. Brick did a good job of trying to hide his feelings, but he was an awful liar. Although his face was made of stone, his eyes gave everything away. When all this was done, if they survived, Cal would have to challenge him to a game of poker. ‘Where was that?’ Brick asked, crossing the aisle and sitting on the pew opposite. ‘All the ice and stuff.’

‘Dunno,’ said Cal, trying once again to get to his feet. He braced his back against the wall, sliding up an inch at a time until he was more or less vertical. He thought back to the place he’d visited when he was asleep and already it had almost faded. There had been ice there, yeah, but other things too. And other people. ‘Rilke,’ he said. ‘She was there.’

Brick nodded, using one of his thumbnails to pick at the wood of the bench in front of him.

‘Least she’s okay,’ he said. ‘Daisy I mean. She’s in there, she seemed safe. I don’t think Rilke can do anything to her there, other than talk to her anyway.’

‘That’s bad enough,’ said Cal. ‘Girl is nuts.’

At this, Brick almost smiled. He gave up on whatever he was scratching at.

‘What now? Rilke said she’s going there, to the storm. You think she was telling the truth?’

Cal took a tentative step towards the door. Now that he was up and moving the pain seemed to have dulled, as if it had grown bored with him. He took another step, gently shaking his arms. His backside felt as though it had turned to the same rock as the church, as though he was slowly becoming one of the blank-eyed statues that lined the walls and tombs. His mum had always told him that sitting for too long on the ground would give him haemorrhoids. That’s just what he needed, on top of everything else, a bad case of the piles.

His mum
. How had he gone for so long without thinking about her? She was right there in London, right in the heart of it.
Swallowed whole by now, devoured by the beast
. He shook the thought away, better not to think at all than think of that.

‘To be honest, Brick, I don’t care if she was telling the truth or not. You know what, if she goes over there, to whatever that thing is, then maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe it will just swallow her up, her and her brother. Do us all a favour.’

Or maybe she’s right,
he thought.
Maybe the man in the storm is one of us, maybe she’ll ask for its help and bring it here, right to where we’re hiding
. And he saw the clouds grow dark, the roof of the church peel away into the churning, raging mess of the sky, the man there, sucking the world into its mouth, obliterating everything. He shuddered so hard he almost fell, the church too dark, too cold, too quiet. He walked unsteadily to the door where a finger of sunlight beckoned him.

‘Be right back,’ he said. Stepping into the day was like stepping into a warm bath, the light a liquid gold that washed over him. The sun was right over his head, which meant they’d been asleep for a little while; a couple of hours maybe. There was still a whisper of smoke in the air, but there was nothing else to be heard in the little town, no sirens or shouts or screams. It was like nothing had ever happened.
How amazing would that be?
he thought.
If it had all just gone away.

It took him a while to find the vicarage, as he set off down the wrong side of the church. The cemetery was large, and surrounded by a hedge of yew trees and something prickly, so dense that there might as well not have been a world beyond it. The little cottage was set amongst flowerbeds and more trees, almost sickeningly quaint. He pushed his way through the door, stopping when he heard voices up ahead.

‘ . . . department claims up to a million people may already be dead, while many times more are missing.’

The television, he recognised the formal tone of a news anchor. He crept forward nonetheless, ready to spring back the way he’d come if he needed to. Didn’t the vicar say he had a wife? The thought of her shrieking down the corridor ready to claw his eyes out made him feel like bolting. He didn’t think his body could survive another attack, old lady or not. He pushed past his fears, through the door, into a kitchen. The television was in the corner, a man and a woman sitting at the news desk while the storm raged behind them. Cal looked away. He didn’t want to see it. He listened, though, as he rummaged through a cupboard.

‘We’ll bring you more on that in a moment,’ said the man. ‘Meanwhile a statement from Downing Street confirms that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have been evacuated from the city, amidst criticism that they are not doing enough to help the people of London. With the death toll already in seven figures, and no indication yet that the threat has even been identified, the government faces increasing pressure from the international community to provide safeguards for the population.’

He opened up a second door, seeing nothing but pots and pans. The third contained linen and, right at the back, a green case with a white cross on the front. He unzipped it, pulling out a bottle of aspirin, still listening to what was being said.

‘Our London correspondent Lucy White is still on the scene. Lucy, can you tell us what the word is on the street?’

The woman’s voice was almost blotted out by the grinding noise of the storm, the sound of a million trumpets blaring.

‘As you can see, Hugh, the word here is chaos, and understandably so. I’m standing south of the river, a stone’s throw or so from the London Eye. Just yesterday there were thousands of people here, locals and tourists enjoying the city. Now the streets are jammed with crowds attempting to flee the attack taking place just fifteen miles from here. Over the river there you can probably see army vehicles. They are setting up a quarantine zone on the northern embankment. The bridges have been closed. Nobody is allowed back there, not even the press. Whatever happens next, we’ll have to watch it from here.’

‘Can you describe the attack, Lucy?’

‘Yes, it’s a cloud, almost like a mushroom cloud from an atomic blast. Only . . .’ She gulped for words. ‘It’s moving, like a tornado. It’s huge, estimated at five miles in diameter, and it’s growing. Everything that gets close, and we have reliable information that this includes some Air Force aircraft, is what you might say vacuumed up, buildings and cars and even whole streets.’

Cal popped open the bottle and swallowed an aspirin. After a second, he took one more, using his hands to splash tap water into his mouth and over his face.

‘There have been some reports of a figure inside the cloud,’ the woman continued, and at this Cal turned back to the television. ‘A man. We believe it is some kind of optical illusion, but . . . But we just don’t know.’

On screen, the reporter was pushed out of the way by an angry foreign guy who shouted something at the camera before running off. There were so many people there, hundreds of them in this one shot alone, most fleeing in the same direction. Over her head it might as well have been a winter’s night, the sky as black as pitch. The screen was too small to really make out what hung there, but it swirled and thrashed, a squirming coil of vipers. She was right, it was
huge
.

‘The Secretary of Defence has announced that he is bringing in a panel of experts to attempt to identify the threat,’ the woman went on. ‘But until that report is made public we have literally nothing to go on.’

A soldier jogged into shot, shoving the woman and gesturing to the camera. She struggled to speak as she was roughhoused off the screen.

‘We’re being told the quarantine line is being moved south. Back to you, Hugh.’

Static, then the studio again. The man shuffled his papers, his mouth open like a goldfish. He coughed and Cal turned away. It was always a bad sign when the newsreaders lost their tongues; that’s how you knew you were really in trouble. Cal rubbed his temples, seeing the phone next to the television, and his thoughts turned back to his mum. She’d be worried sick about him, she would have left countless messages on his phone, but he’d had no signal out in Fursville, and his mobile had been lost somewhere in between the raid at the factory and Schiller’s destruction of Hemmingway. He picked up the cordless handset, paused for a moment, then dialled the house number.

What was he going to say to her?
Hey, Mum, sorry not to have been in touch for a while, it’s just that last time we saw each other you tried to beat your way through the car window to kill me, remember?
Of course she wouldn’t remember. That’s how it worked, the Fury, that was the cruellest thing about it. They attacked you, they killed you, then they forgot you. It was like you’d never existed.

The phone connected, but it was him that answered. The sound of his own voice made his heart flutter, a depth charge of adrenalin detonating inside his stomach.

‘Hi, this is the Morrisseys, we’re not here right now but leave a message, yeah? Or if it’s me you want, call me on my mobile. See ya.’

He sounded so young, so far away, so not himself, as though there was another version of Cal Morrissey sitting at home, one without an angel in his heart. He heard the beep, realised he was breathing loudly down the phone, shut off the call with his thumb. He didn’t want his mum to think she had a pervy phone stalker, she had enough to worry about. He racked his head, trying to remember her mobile number, typing it in. It started ringing.
Please be okay,
he thought. And she would be, right? They lived in Oakminster, it was way east of the city, miles away from the storm.
Unless she’d gone into London,
he wondered.
Maybe she was there looking for you.

‘Hello?’

The single, simple word took him utterly by surprise, a crack in the dam. Before he even knew it he was sobbing, the cries flooding up with so much strength that he couldn’t get a word out. He collapsed against the counter, the tears streaming down his face, salty on his tongue, his whole body juddering with the force of it.

‘Callum? Cal, is that you? Jesus, where are you? Are you okay?’

He spluttered out a handful of not-quite-words, taking a deep breath and trying again.

‘I’m okay, Mum,’ he moaned, the sobs ebbing into soft hiccups. He wiped the tears away, his eyes feeling as if they were stuffed with cotton wool, his throat aching. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Oh God,’ he realised she was crying too. ‘I was so worried, Cal, I thought . . . I thought something terrible had happened. Where are you?’

‘I’m safe,’ he said. ‘I’m out of the city. You need to get out too, Mum, something really bad is going on.’

Scuffling, like she was unlocking a door or something. He could hear voices.

‘I’m okay,’ she said, sniffing. There was a steeliness to her voice now. Cal knew it well, once the tears were gone there was always anger. ‘Do you know how worried I’ve been? You just took off with the car. I’m assuming it was you who took the car?’

‘Yeah, sorry, I—’

‘Cal, I’ve had the police out looking for you, the neighbours, nobody could think why you’d up and run away. Was it because of what happened at school, the stampede? Your friends are scared, Cal, and furious too, they think you’ve abandoned them. Poor Georgia is still in the hospital. Why, Cal? You better have a good explanation.’

I’ve got something inside me, a creature that’s waiting to hatch and turn me into a weapon so that we can fight the man in the storm, but it’s so powerful and so alien that people can’t stand to be near it, so they try to kill me.
The thought was so ludicrous in his head that he snorted a bitter laugh.

‘This isn’t funny, Cal, your dad is flying back tomorrow, he’s gonna be so angry.’

‘Sorry, I wasn’t laughing. Look, Mum, I can’t tell you everything, not yet. I just wanted you to know that I’m safe, that I’m okay. I’ll come home soon, I promise, there’s just something I’ve got to do first.’

Was that true? Would he ever be able to go home? What happened if they did fight the man in the storm, if they somehow managed to defeat him? Would the angels just go? Or were they there for good?

‘Don’t go home,’ said his mum. ‘I’m not there. I’m at your Auntie Kate’s. Haven’t you seen the news?’

‘Yeah.’ He offered a silent thanks that she was safe, or out of the city at least. Kate lived over in Southend, right by the ocean. If they needed to, they could always get on a boat and head into Europe. ‘Yeah, it’s really bad, Mum.’

‘They’re saying millions are going to die, or are already dead. God, Cal, can you get here? Where are you? I promise I won’t be angry with you if you just drive to Kate’s right now.’

‘I . . . I can’t, Mum, not just yet. But I will, yeah?’ The sobs were pounding at his chest again and he locked them in. ‘Look, I gotta go, but I love you.’

‘Cal, please, just tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.’

‘I love you, Mum.’

It took her a moment to hear him, not his words but the truth inside them, the understanding that it might be the last time they spoke. She began to weep again, and Cal could see her in Kate’s house, sitting on the faux leather couch in her leopard-print coat, her head resting in immaculate red painted nails, surrounded by that fog of hair spray and Chanel No. 5. He saw himself putting an arm around her, squeezing her, the way he did when she and Dad had an argument; giving her a peck on the soft skin of her cheek.