Pandaemonium Part 35

'How long have they been gone?' Radar asks, casting a concerned glance at Cameron.

Kirk looks instinctively at his watch. It still reads 11:00, as it has done since the hike. He hauls it off in frustration and casts it to the floor. Instead of hitting the ground, it whips away sideways through the air and sticks to the wall, drawn by irresistible magnetic forces.

He looks at Heather, like he needs a corroborative witness that this just happened. Her expression does the job.

'Did I dog Physics the day we covered this?' he asks.

'My fear is that Steinmeyer has in fact been possessed,' says Tullian, leading Blake through another sodium-lit service duct. 'And that is why he is, literally, h.e.l.l-bent on preserving this infernal gateway. He was always a driven man, admirably so, but not like this, not to the exclusion of reason. However, perhaps this very drive was what made him a suitable vessel. He has certainly proven an effective one.'

Tullian turns and places a hand on Blake's forearm, gripping it as he looks intently into his eyes.

'I have to warn you, Father, that there is a strong possibility, should your friends come into his sphere, that they will be contaminated too. I'm telling you this in order that you may prepare yourself and understand that, if this is the case, then they are no longer your friends.'

Tullian advances into the duct, Blake following. This one is only a few yards long, housing a ladder at the end. An aluminium plate beside it reads 'Observation Platform Emergency Access'.

Tullian puts a foot on the first rung and then stops, turning around to face Blake, something having occurred to him.

'There is another thing I need to tell you, in case anything should happen to me.'

He reaches among the folds of his robes and produces an iPhone, which he holds up momentarily for Blake to see before popping it back whence it came.

'If for any reason I don't survive, it's imperative that you recover this.'

'What's on it? The Pope's mobile number?'

'Evidence that I can use as leverage if any government, any organisation, ever attempts to repeat this madness: evidence proving that what was brought forth here was not merely some unknown species, but the forces of h.e.l.l. This phone contains video files and test data demonstrating that holy water burns their skin, while ordinary water does not. There is no chemical explanation for why mere water, once blessed, can do that to living tissue. This const.i.tutes proof that the scientific paradigm has met its outer boundaries. This const.i.tutes proof that what we have been telling the world for two thousand years is true.'

Blake had seen the footage in the lab, simultaneously amazing and appalling. He saw holy water burn living tissue: the tissue of a living creature, restrained and helpless, unable to resist or retreat as its skin blistered and burned. He also saw a corpse alongside: a demon that had been tortured and crucified.

He understands a terrible truth. Kane was right about him: he never truly believed. All these years, he's just been searching for a reason to. Well, now he's been given one, and he doesn't like how it feels. If h.e.l.l exists, then so must Heaven, but he finds them two sides at war: battle and slaughter, enemy prisoners tortured and executed. Didn't he already have this in the old world yesterday?

'Gimme a hand here,' calls Sendak, beckoning Adnan to help him clear the doorway of bodies. They're only feet apart, but he has to all but shout above the sound coming from beyond the doors.

'This is the Cathedral,' Steinmeyer announces, swiping a keycard. 'Once we get inside, I don't need to warn you to stay back from the anomaly.'

Sendak spots a pistol gripped in the hand of a dead soldier. He tries to wrest it free, but it is locked solid.

'Sarge,' Adnan yells, using his head to indicate the floor by his feet, his hands occupied by dragging what's left of some poor grunt.

Sendak looks across and sees the shotgun lying beneath the body Adnan is s.h.i.+fting. There are also two boxes of twelve-gauge ammunition by the wall, one of them spilled open.

They both begin loading sh.e.l.ls into their weapons' breeches, which is when Sendak notices that Adnan looks concerned.

'What?'

'Fresh weapons and spare ammo just outside a big door. End-of-level-boss and a major battle up ahead.'

'This is real life, kid, not a video game.'

'Yeah, and in real life, somebody stashed this hardware for a fight - and still never made it.'

x.x.xIII Blake emerges behind Tullian on to a platform above the main body of a vast cavern. The pulsing noise is deafening, the air filled with wind and light. He feels like he is on the bridge of a s.h.i.+p in a lightning storm. There are monitors, control panels, switches and dials on console banks either side of the platform, effectively forming barriers against the thirty-foot drop below. Waist-height railings fill in the gaps. They don't look very substantial, but Blake is guessing the weather up here is usually calmer.

He looks over the side to observe, if not the source, then the epicentre of the energy storm. He sees two great black cubes, like nuts on a giant bolt, separating sections of a huge steel cylinder that disappears into the live rock at either end of the cavern. In front of the central section, between the cubes, floats a black ellipse that appears to exist in only two dimensions. It has no depth, and though Blake can't see through it, he can see either side of it. Flashes dance around it like a corona, fading before they can resolve into being for any length of time. There is vibration all around, every object shaking into a blur with each pulse, their oscillations so intense that it looks like solid matter is having difficulty holding its shape too.

Tullian points towards a section of the console bank on Blake's right, where there is a large lever under a Perspex cover, marked 'Emergency Shutdown'.

'We can't let anyone near these controls,' he shouts above the noise. 'Not anyone! The horrors you've seen already are nothing, Father, nothing. If this gateway is not destroyed, the dark legions will have unopposed pa.s.sage into our world.'

Sendak is first through the door. He has barely emerged into the deafening, teeming chaos of the Cathedral when a demon comes hurtling towards him, scampering over a pile of crates. He blasts it with his shotgun as the others file in quickly at his back.

Steinmeyer rushes past and stops in his tracks, aghast, as he takes in the view. The floor of the hall is strewn with debris: mostly the contents of the soldiers' interrupted packing-up exercise, but much of it the remains of what used to be his control and monitoring HQ. He scrambles amidst the wreckage, looking frantically for any terminal that might still be running, but what hasn't been shot up or smashed has been fried and scrambled.

'What the f.u.c.k do we do now?' asks Sendak.

'I need to get to the manual shut-offs on the observation deck. They're a built-in failsafe, they override all online systems. They're just up . . . oh, f.u.c.k, no. Tullian.'

Sendak looks towards the elevated deck jutting out of the cavern wall opposite the cubes, where he sees Blake standing alongside a guy in black robes.

Steinmeyer raises his decoherence rifle and takes aim. He gets off a shot just as Sendak throws up an arm to deflect it. The blast vaporises a section of console as the two figures dive for cover.

'The h.e.l.l you doing?' Sendak demands, keeping hold of the barrel of Steinmeyer's weapon. 'That's our friend up there.'

'You don't understand. He's with-'

Steinmeyer is cut off as a creature erupts from the wreckage by their feet and sends both men sprawling to the floor, Sendak's weapon clattering from his grip as he falls. Steinmeyer keeps hold of his, but only at the cost of an agonisingly awkward landing that snaps his ankle.

Blanking out the pain for one last desperate second, Steinmeyer manages to roll on to his back and fire his rifle, but only hits an upturned stack of servers, inches from where Sendak has righted himself into a crouch.

Sendak feels the wave of dust just before he sees the creature leap upon the professor, an army-issue Ka-Bar knife gripped in its teeth as it wrests the rifle from his hands and tosses it far among the rubble. Out of the corner of his eye, he locates the shotgun's stock, only inches from his right hand. He stretches to tug it from where it is wedged amid the debris, only to discover, when he pulls it, that the stock is all that remains. The creature yanks back Steinmeyer's head with one claw, exposing his throat and roaring out a battle cry as it raises the blade in the other.

The battle cry turns to one of pain as Adnan's shotgun and Rosemary's arrow make their interventions. The a.s.sailant is thrown backwards off Steinmeyer like a rag doll, its head exploding in a cloud of black.

Sendak watches Adnan step across to where the creature lands, pumping his weapon to finish it off if need be. Then his warning cry is swallowed by the storm as a second demon, larger than anything he has seen so far, emerges from cover and grabs Adnan from behind. It lifts him off the ground, gripped around both his upper arms, and hurls him into the black disc just as Rosemary fires her final arrow.

The arrow lodges in the creature's back while it stares in apparent confusion at the portal, into which Adnan has disappeared instead of being violently repelled, as was presumably the creature's intention. It then breaks off the arrow contemptuously, turns and begins stomping towards Rosemary.

Blake watches this unfold from above, his own warning cries lost in the tumult. He turns to Tullian, gripping the barrel of the Cardinal's rifle and directing it below.

'Shoot it. Shoot it, for G.o.d's sake.'

Tullian hauls the weapon clear of Blake's grip and shakes his head gravely.

'This weapon has charge left for one shot, and I'm saving that for anyone who tries to reach these switches.'

Rosemary turns and looks for another weapon, but sees only Steinmeyer crawling hopelessly amid the wreckage, looking for his lost prototype. The creature halts briefly to pick a knife from the body of a dead soldier, before resuming its progress with singular intent. It is two yards away when a flat-screen monitor smashes into its head, dropped from somewhere above. This doesn't floor it, but by the time it has recovered from the blow, it finds itself looking at Sendak as well as Rosemary.

Sendak moves in large sideways steps, waving his arms, drawing it away from the girl, towards where they came in.

'Yeah, that's right,' he shouts. 'Over here, you Gollum-looking sonofab.i.t.c.h.'

Sendak steps back through the doorway, brandis.h.i.+ng a blade of his own. His opponent follows, at which point he hits a b.u.t.ton on the wall and brings the doors together with a servo-a.s.sisted whine, locking the creature away from Rosemary and Steinmeyer, but also locking himself in a tight corridor with the thing. He scans his surroundings. All he sees is body parts and dead soldiers. The creature gives a roar, towering over him. f.u.c.ker's eight feet if it's an inch.

They both have Ka-Bars. Other than that, it doesn't look like a fair match. He almost died here once before, long time ago. Maybe some things are just meant to be. Maybe you can outrun your fate for a while, but you can never escape it.

Blake leans over the console bank, having lost sight of Rosemary when she disappeared beneath the platform. Tullian is also intent on what he can and can't see below, happier when he had Steinmeyer in his line of vision and knew he was safely isolated away from the controls. With the elevator out of commission, the only way up here is via the emergency ladder they just ascended, and that requires a journey back out of the Cathedral. Thus he's searching the view beneath, but casting a regular eye back towards the door behind him, inset in the rock.

Blake thinks he hears a voice and strides across to the front of the platform, looking over the barrier closest to the portal. He sees Rosemary staring up, an arm around Steinmeyer, who looks racked with pain as he struggles to remain upright. Blake's guess is he's broken his leg.

'You have to shut down the machine,' Rosemary shouts.

Blake turns to look at Tullian and finds him right alongside, also staring down at these supplicants.

'No,' Tullian responds. 'It must be destroyed.'

Steinmeyer summons up whatever strength it takes to shout through the strains of his agony.

'd.a.m.n it, man, this thing isn't just going to short a few fuses. It's a nuclear device. It's going to take out the entire mountain.'

'Christ,' Blake appeals. 'I left twenty kids less than two miles from here.'

Tullian's eyes bulge briefly but his expression remains intent.

'He's lying,' he tells Blake. 'He'd say anything to keep the gateway open. And even if he isn't, then that doesn't matter either. This is more important than individual lives. Their souls will be saved. And for their sacrifice, for our sacrifice, the reward will be truly great.'

Tullian steps away backwards, raising his weapon at Blake as he moves to protect the shutdown controls. That's when Blake understands that Tullian's belief is absolute. He is prepared to die for it; for and through his faith.

The question for Blake, the question he can no longer evade, is what does he he believe? believe?

He believes Steinmeyer isn't lying, and he believes Tullian's logic is correct in that G.o.d would reward anyone who made the ultimate sacrifice to defeat evil in His name. If Blake truly believes what he has so long professed to, then he will very soon be granted paradise, and reunited with those he has lost. Reunited with Gail. Reunited with the kids who died tonight. Reunited with Kane.

He offered Kane Pascal's wager, and he refused, even in his final throes. Now Blake is facing Pascal's wager as inverted by Sendak: Do you truly believe there's an afterlife, and are thus content to sacrifice the life you've got here?

There are only only atheists in foxholes. atheists in foxholes.

No bet.

Blake flexes his thumb and powers up the pike as he swings it, sweeping it upwards and into Tullian's rifle just before he pulls the trigger. The rifle fails to fire, blue sparks dancing around it for a moment before its LEDs fade to black.

'Now step away from the controls,' Blake tells him, waving the pike.

Tullian sighs gravely and bows his head in defeat, but it's a feint. He changes his grip on the rifle, grabbing it by the barrel, and lunges at Blake, swinging it like a club. Blake reads it all the way, s.h.i.+fting his footing so that Tullian's momentum sends him off-balance, spinning from a glancing impact against Blake's side. He sprawls at speed towards the railings and tumbles over the edge, but Blake is able to extend the pike for him to grab on to. He levers it against the steel barrier, leaving Tullian dangling by one hand, thirty feet above the Cathedral floor.

The pulsing intensifies further, shaking loose rocks from the walls. This place really is going to go up, and soon.

'Shut it down,' Steinmeyer calls. 'There's no time to waste.'

Blake looks back. He can't reach the console without letting go of the pike. The Cardinal stretches up with his other hand, seeking a second grip, and as he does so, something falls from his robes. A gla.s.s phial tumbles and spins towards earth, smas.h.i.+ng against a metal crate.

The liquid proceeds to eat through the metal in a fizzing, steaming fury, the droplets that sprayed the concrete voraciously eating that too.

'Oleum,' shouts Steinmeyer. 'Concentrated acid. He faked it. He switched the f.u.c.king phials.'

Blake stares down at Tullian, who has now established a second hold on the pike: clinging on to this life with both hands.

'They aren't demons.,' Blake shouts. 'You brutalised them. You made made them demons.' them demons.'

'I know what they are,' Tullian calls back. 'They're Satan's agents just the same. Don't you see? He's the Deceiver. It's Satan's gambit that we drop our guard while his minions invade. The very fact that they are not not demons is demons is greater greater proof of his scheming. That's why I had to convince the military to shut it down, at all costs.' proof of his scheming. That's why I had to convince the military to shut it down, at all costs.'

Blake thinks of Kane's words to Guthrie, two lives tallied among Tullian's 'costs'.

If scientists found indisputable proof that there was no G.o.d, the Church wouldn't miss a beat. It would simply say that this emergent proof was merely a fabrication to lead man astray . . .

'He sabotaged the place,' shouts Rosemary. 'He let all of this happen. He killed everybody.'

'You lied about everything. You're You're the one who wouldn't accept the evidence.' the one who wouldn't accept the evidence.'

'It is the measure of our faith to believe in spite of in spite of evidence, Father. Satan is using science to seduce you. And only faith can save us from him.' evidence, Father. Satan is using science to seduce you. And only faith can save us from him.'

Another pulse sends more rocks tumbling, one of them smas.h.i.+ng into the platform only feet away. Time's up.

'Science says you fall at ten metres per second squared,' Blake tells him. 'Let's see if faith can save you from that.'

Blake lets go of the pike and lunges for the console.

Rosemary watches Tullian fall, looking away before he hits the ground, only he doesn't; at least not directly. There is a flash of movement from close to one of the cubes, and Tullian is intercepted by a demon pouncing upon him in mid-air. They land in a tangle in front of the anomaly, the blue light of the pike crackling the air around them, before the demon rights itself and hurls Tullian, pike and all, through the portal.

The creature then turns to face Rosemary and Steinmeyer, roaring its vengeful intent as it charges forward.

Its head suddenly explodes in a splatter of black blood as several shots rip into it from the side. They both turn to see Sendak standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol: still gripped in the now severed hand of its previous owner.

Blake locates the Emergency Shutdown Sequence lever and flips it. An LED then lights up on a b.u.t.ton close by, stating: 'Confirm Emergency Shutdown?'

'd.a.m.n straight,' Blake says, and hits it.