Year Zero (2000), page 24
Everyone else was utterly dumbstruck, so it was left to Molly to say: "Wingate! What on earth do you think you're doing?"
"I want out," was Wingate's reply. "Right out of the country. I'm in the business and I know what's going on. I don't know if it was an accident or a deliberate release, but I don't need an electron microscope to tell me that it certainly didn't jump over from any Hong Kong chicken and there's no way I'm sticking around to see how it all unwinds. I want out —but I'm taking my work with me. All of it. No carefully prepared booby-trapped packages—the real McCoy. To get it out of the machines I need a better password than the one I've got, so I figure I'll have to use yours."
The last remark was directed, with feeling, at Edward Hyde. Hyde had been busy matching the reproachful look that Mr. Wilson had been directing at Molly, who had blown their earlier plan to use Wingate as a mule by telling him about the booby-trap, but now he turned his whole attention to Wingate.
"What the hell are you talking about, Wingate?" he said, hotly.
Molly didn't know whether to feel terrified or relieved. "He's talking about the zombie flu!" she said, excitedly. "He's twigged, even if the rest of you are too bloody slow or too bloody distracted. I was just trying to explain it to them, Nat. I told them it was manufactured! De'Ath's got an immunization serum right there in that plastic bag."
"Pull the other one, Judas," Wingate told her. "You can't possibly think I'm stupid enough to fall for that one!" It wasn't until he spared her that one vicious glance that Molly caught sight of the Devil in Wingate's eyes. She had never seen the Devil there before, but there was no doubt in her mind—the Devil had got to Wingate, and had turned him into a spanner to be thrown into Chiliad Science's works.
"This isn't necessary, Nat," Hyde said, having collected his scattered wits and moderated his tone "and your timing could hardly be worse. We're all on the same side, you know."
"We could have been," said Wingate, bitterly, "but you blew that—so don't blame me for my timing. Now move out of the door, Hyde—I don't have any more time to waste."
Molly had seen Wilson's hand edging towards his shoulder, but she didn't think that Wingate had. Nor did she suppose that Wingate was capable of doing anything about it even if he had, having presumed on the basis of his ultranerdish appearance that he had probably never held a gun in his life, let alone fired one. Wilson presumably felt the same way, but he too had forgotten that Wingate was an American, and that British standards of likelihood didn't apply to his particular case.
When Wilson made his move he did so with practised efficiency, but the man in black was only half way through the draw when Wingate blew a neat little hole in the middle of his forehead. As the back of Wilson's head blew out, blood and globs of tissue spattered the wall behind him. Molly winced as the half-drawn gun was released from Wilson's disturbed grasp and soared through the air towards her, but it fell to the carpet six inches short of her left trainer.
Angie screamed and Marjorie De'Ath turned zombie-white, but Molly was curiously unmoved. She still hadn't forgiven Wilson for the mangled tit and the black eye, let alone the intention he'd been harbouring before tall dark Tom had interrupted him—and she had watched him mete out exactly this treatment to four zombies whose only crime was to want to give him a hug. She watched his black-suited body go down in a heap as bits of his brains redistributed themselves in a series of slow downward trajectories across the patter of the hotel wallpaper.
"Wingate ..." she began, uncertainly.
"I can't take you with me, Molly," the scientist said, curtly. "You'll have to make your own arrangements for getting out. Take my advice and start now. Even if these motherfuckers didn't start the war, they're sure as hell not going to stop it. Britain's finished, maybe all of Europe. Africa and Asia will go down like dominoes. North America is where any comeback will come from, if it comes at all, but you might be better off on some small island, the more remote the better—Madeira or St Helena. Now, move."
Again he addressed his final admonition to Edward Hyde —and this time, Hyde made shift to obey. It had presumably occurred to him that for as long Marjorie De'Ath was still available to take his place, even he was disposable. He might even have had enough heroism in his soul to realise that if he went with Wingate, Dr. De'Ath might be able to get on with the business of getting the immunization serum into manufacture—a business whose seriousness and urgency could no longer be plausibly doubted.
It wasn't until Wingate closed the door behind him that everyone relaxed. Molly knelt down to take Angie in her arms as the twelve-year-old said: "What did he mean about getting out, Mummy?"
Marjorie De'Ath was busy drawing a deep breath of relief, but she didn't seem to need any physical support, so Molly stayed where she was and answered the question.
"He's figured out that the plague is something cooked up in a genetic engineering lab, sweetie," Molly explained. "He doesn't think it can be stopped before it causes a complete collapse of civilization. He didn't believe me when I told him about the serum." She didn't think it necessary to mention that she'd seen the Devil in Wingate's eyes, and that he was probably far more dangerous than he seemed.
"He's gone mad!" snapped Dr. De'Ath, biliously. "Completely off his head! He thinks it's ours! He thinks we let it out. He doesn't have the sense to realise that even if we were developing such weapons—which we aren't, by the way—we'd have the sense to manufacture an immunization serum in tandem with the attack agent, so that we could protect our own."
Molly sighed. She released Angie and came slowly erect, purloining Wilson's gun as she stood. She tucked it away as unobtrusively as she could. Marjorie De'Ath was too preoccupied to notice, although Angie saw it all. "But he's not one of your own, is he?" Molly said, quietly. "He doesn't belong to anyone any more. He's a loose cannon."
The door opened again, and two men in black burst through, wielding pump-action shotguns. They groaned theatrically when they saw that Wingate was gone and that their former superior was dead.
"He's headed for Peaslee," Dr. De'Ath told them, having recovered most of her composure. "We'd best get after him. If you can take him out without risking Edward, do it—but he's an experienced shooter. Don't give him any chances."
The two men in black nodded curtly and hurried on their way.
"Come on," Dr. De'Ath said to Molly, as she headed towards the main staircase. "We can get to work on this stuff as soon as Wingate's out of the way."
"Actually," Molly said, as meekly as she could, "my little girl's had a terrible shock, and it is nearly Christmas. I think I'd rather go home and rest, for now. Things will probably look a great deal brighter in the morning. You can send someone to pick me up then, if you still need me. Nine o'clock?"
Dr. De'Ath had had a terrible shock too, and she must have thought that Moll and Angie would only get in the way of the siege. "Fine," she said. "Hopefully, Dr. Hyde will be safe by then, and we'll be on the way to figuring out exactly what this stuff you've given us can do."
"Somebody has to save the world, Dr. De'Ath," Molly said, earnestly. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
"You can be sure that I'll do my very best," De'Ath replied, her homiletic reflexes clicking into gear in spite of the situation, "but science isn't an individualistic business, as you well know. There are thousands of people already working on every aspect of this problem, with the best intentions in the world. The method will pull us through, just as it always has. It's the one dependable thing in the universe. Science will save the world, not you or I."
Having said that, the grey-haired genius hurried off down the staircase and through the lobby.
Angie looked up at Molly. "Can I mention the Devil now, Mummy?" she asked.
"Yes, darling," Molly replied, "it's safe to mention the Devil again, now."
"They weren't ever going to help us, were they? Not against the Devil."
"No," Molly said. "They have their own area of expertise, but people like us always have to face the Devil on our own."
54
It was very late when they got back to the flat, but they didn't have any real difficulty making the journey. The buses had virtually stopped running but creeping zombification had improved the manners, if not the motor co-ordination, of the majority of taxi-drivers, so London aboveground wasn't yet paralysed. The tube still seemed to be functioning normally, a triumphant testimonial to the value of automation.
The hours of darkness presumably saw a further deterioration in the situation, but Molly and Angie spent the night locked up tight in the precious privacy of their own home. If the zombie Jarvises had had sufficient presence of mind to report Angie missing they obviously hadn't had enough to mention the gun with the result that the misdemeanour was far too low on the ever-inflating register of Social Services priorities even to warrant a phone call. Given that the next day was both Sunday and Christmas Eve, Molly reckoned that they were now safe from any official intervention until the world had actually ended—or not, if the Anti-Antichrist could be put into production in time.
Molly and Angie got up at seven so that they'd have plenty of time to eat and compose themselves before leaving the flat at eight. Molly stowed Mr. Wilson's gun in her knicker drawer, estimating that things hadn't yet become that dangerous on the streets, but she kept the deus ex machine about her person because she didn't dare take the slightest risk of mislaying it. In any case, the deus ex machine was probably a more reliable defence against the enemy she had to go to see.
Paying a call on the Devil seemed like a more profitable use of her time than twiddling her thumbs at Peaslee while Marjorie De'Ath's minions started work on the serum—assuming that they were now able to do so.
When they came out on to the Caledonian Road Angie pointed south-westwards at something in the far distance, partly obscured by the morning haze, and said: "What's that?"
It looked like a raggedly-tapering cone whose slender tip was lost in the clouds.
"I don't know," said Molly. "I don't think it was there yesterday—but I think we're going to find out soon enough."
Molly was glad to find that it was not merely possible but easy to catch a tube from Camden Town to Moorgate. The train wasn't even crowded—the vast majority of the commuters who would normally have been packed in like sardines had either been so comprehensively zombified as to have failed to get out of bed, or so comprehensively spooked by the increasingly-obvious plague that they had decided to take whatever kind of leave they could get and head out of town.
Ironically, the Moorgate-bound diehards who had refused to compromise their sense of duty found their good intentions firmly frustrated when they emerged from the station by the sole remaining exit to find themselves facing a looming forty-foot wall of bleak black stone that had divided New Union Street into two and had reduced Finsbury Circus to the status of a mere Crescent. Even at this close range Molly could see that within the first wall was another, far higher, and within that, a third. There seemed to be six walls in all, surrounding a central tower so incredibly high that its heights vanished into the clouds.
Even the unzombified brokers and bankers were so stupefied by the sight of this astonishing construction that they were reduced to standing helplessly by, unable to bestir themselves. Molly, by contrast, took Angie by the hand and started walking round the circular wall in search of the main gate. The fact that the Devil had raised such a vast edifice several days ahead of the due date of the Apocalypse obviously wasn't a good sign; it implied that he was feeling very confident of his new World Empire.
It turned out to be a long walk, although it wouldn't have been any quicker if they'd gone round the other way. The main gate turned out to be almost exactly opposite her starting-point, on Queen Street Place facing Southwark Bridge. The gate was twenty feet tall. It appeared to have been made from planks of lignum vitae, abundantly reinforced by ornately wrought bars and studs of titanium, but Molly knew that it was mere art-work rather than serious siege-craft. The Devil did not expect to have to defend this citadel against any ordinary army.
Molly was surprised to discover that the sentry posted at the gate was tall dark Tom, back in human form and black leather. He still had the same flamboyant taste in hats.
"I thought you'd found your niche in Faerie, " Molly said.
"So did I," he said, with a sigh, "but the best-laid plans of mice and cats ... it turned out that the Queen wanted the music of the spheres in order to swing a deal with Old Nick. She figures that Faerie has no future, and sees no payoff in hiding away in a timewarp for ever and ever. She wants a place in the New World Order. This, apparently, is my share. No boots, no guitar, no nookie. A real dog's life."
"You are going to let us in, aren't you?" Molly said.
"Oh yes," said Tom. "You're expected. I even have instructions to guide you through the labyrinth, to save time." His green eyes narrowed thoughtfully before he added: "If I had to guess, I'd say that you have something else they want.
Maybe something you didn't have before. You've been back to the saucer, I suppose?"
"I've got nothing special," Molly lied.
Tom looked down at Angie as she said that. "Are you sure you want to take the little one in with you?"
"Quite sure," Molly said.
"I'm not so little," Angie observed.
"In here," Tom said, as the great black door swung open, "everybody's little—but some are even littler than others."
It was easy to see what he meant. The gap separating the outer wall from the next one in was criss-crossed by so many hollow arches and covered bridges that no part of the interior ground level of the Devil's citadel was open to the sky. Beyond the gateway was a gloomy space whose crowded vault extended crazily into darkness. The next wall was so close that Molly felt distinctly cramped as well as humiliatingly small.
Tom led them away into a maze of corridors full of abrupt left and right-turns and upward and downward-leading stairways. There were dozens of doors, all made of the same black wood as the main gate, many of which had to be unlocked using keys selected from the multitude attached to the huge iron ring through which Tom's belt was looped. The lighting was uniformly dismal, although the torches which smouldered in their high-set brackets were closely akin to the fake "log fires" favoured by British Gas.
"You'd think he'd have made a few more concessions to modernity," Molly commented.
"It's very different from his last place," Tom informed her. "Pandemonium was a cross between a Tunisian brothel and Las Vegas. Anyhow, modernity is dead, and even post-modernity is past it. This is Year Zero."
"I know what year it is," Molly retorted.
When Tom opened the next door, Molly saw that there were people waiting for them in the corridor beyond—but the Devil wasn't among them.
"Hi, Moll!" said the first of the two female figures, grinning as she'd never grinned before. "Great to have you back, even out of uniform—and you've brought little Angie, too! Lovely girl."
Molly felt Angie draw closer to her side.
"Hello, Honeysucker," Molly said. "If I were you, I'd get a new dentist."
Honeysuckle's costume hadn't changed in any conspicuous detail but she was sporting a magnificent pair of extended canines. The first time she and Molly had met she'd merely been a Gothic fay, but now she'd graduated into a fully-fledged lamia.
"I've lost my taste for honey, honey," the ex-fay said, licking her scarlet lips, "but I could still give you a real thrill."
Behind her, the similarly-transmogrified Peaseblossom gave a delicate little laugh.
"You'd need more than joke-shop teeth to do that," Molly assured her. "Don't even think about trying to get in our way. You know what happened last time."
"Only those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it," Honeysuckle assured her. "That's a human thing, don't you think. Oh my! Done the tragedy, done the farce! Whatever's next? You're caught in the web, darlings, and Mummy Spider's on her way. Easy-Peasy and I wanted to say hello and goodbye, but we can't come with you today. Catch you later, I don't think."
Molly pushed past the chortling vampires, drawing Angie along with her.
Although they turned every which way at least a hundred times, Molly knew that their effective directions were northwards and upwards, towards the top of the central tower which stood on the site of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. She was very weary by the time they reached the elevator which took them up the last few hundred floors.
"I'm afraid of heights, Mummy," said Angie, who was smart enough to realise where they were headed.
"So am I, darling," Molly said, less calmly than she could have wished. "Let's not go near the edge, shall we?"
She was profoundly glad, when the car doors opened, to find that they were not on a platform open to the sky but a glass-clad rotunda. The ceiling was glass too, but there were metal shutters beyond the glass that hid the greater part of the sky. There were other rooms—or kiosks, at any rate—grouped around the elevator shaft, but the difference between the inner and outer diameters of the rotunda was at least twenty feet. The open space was lushly carpeted in red.
Molly was not surprised to discover that there was a lone male figure awaiting them at the window opposite the lift doors, who turned when she made no move to go to join him. She was, however, very surprised to see the face he wore. It was not the same one that he had presented to her in the back of poor Dean's stolen car, but she recognised it just the same.
It was Adam, seducer of Annie, Francine and—so rumour had it—Christine: the man who had persuaded her that this was Year Zero, the year when the past could and ought to be obliterated so that history could be born anew.
Hyde and De'Ath had assumed, not unnaturally, given their limited powers of imagination, that the mysterious Adam—whose sojourn in the B&B had initiated a flood of alleged delusions—had been working for a rival biotech company. They had been wrong about that, just as they had been wrong about the reality of the greys. Adam had been the Devil all along.
