The Apocalypse Codex

We climb again until we reach the top of the steps. I’m gasping for breath and my buttocks and upper thighs feel as if I’ve been beaten with baseball bats. Ahead of us there’s a wall of unmortared giant limestone blocks, windowless and surrounded by a row of pillars the size of ICBMs supporting the roof above. It is like the Parthenon in Athens—if the ancient Athenians who built it had been twenty- meter-tall giants. I can see a dark-mouthed opening between two pillars about eighty meters away, and I am at a loss for words to describe my lack of eagerness to go there. On the other hand, our pursuers are wheezing angrily through the gaps in their rib cages and brandishing stabby implements in a most unfriendly manner, as they come surging up the steps below us like a wave of bony hooligans.

I point at the opening wordlessly. Persephone nods, then picks herself up and breaks into a loose-limbed jog.

I stagger drunkenly towards the opening, trying to ignore the grotesque carvings inlaid on the bases of the pillars and the walls of the temple—not so much Achaean as Aztec, but with added writhing tentacles and horned skulls—and follow Persephone up to the threshold. It’s a big rectangular doorway about five or six meters high and three meters wide, and the wooden doors that would normally block it have been carefully opened and wedged. Gee thanks, whoever. I pause beside Persephone and look inside. It’s gloomy, the dim light filtering down from skylights in the ceiling. The roof is free-standing, vaulting high overhead—the classical columns outside are decorative, for there’s no forest of roof supports within—and I find myself peering across fifty meters of stone towards a raised dais that supports an altar-shaped sarcophagus. There’s a glowing circle in the air beside the sarcophagus and, unlike the one we found in Schiller’s office, this one reeks of power, fat and bloated with the life energy of worshipers. There’s a faint metallic smell in the air, as of blood, and it makes me feel hungry. I can feel Persephone’s mind behind me, wondering at our surroundings; I tap her on the shoulder and she glances at me.

“No time,” I say, then take a step forward. The eaters will be reaching the top step soon, and I’d rather not stop to dicker with them. Besides, there are more tremors. They’ve started again, gentle aftershocks to the earlier screeching and groaning of stones. The ground is vibrating again, as if some huge beast is stirring uneasily in its sleep beneath our feet, and even though the shocks are weaker they’re making me nervous.

Then a human figure dives through the open gate towards us, and all hell breaks loose.

16. THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

“DON’T SHOOT HIM!” SCREAMS SCHILLER AS HE RISES FROM his throne, clawing at its wooden arms in pain as he stands. “Take him alive! ‘For I am the way and the life, sayeth the Lord!’”

“Yes, Father,” Roseanne says meekly, lowering her FN P90; the barrel of the bullpup submachine gun is smoking slightly where it melted the cuff of her part-synthetic sleeve.

The boys aren’t waiting for direction: they pile through the gate in eerie silence, drawing batons and tasers in unison. Their hosts ride them with expert precision, coordinating perfectly to fan their mounts out across the floor of the courtyard on the other side. Schiller shuffles round the throne and takes a hissing breath. “Tell Alex to secure this side, then follow me through,” he tells the other handmaid. “Roseanne, help me.”

Roseanne goes to his right arm and lifts it across her shoulder. “Father, will you—”

“The prodigal son will serve, willingly or no,” Schiller says quietly. “Through the door, Daughter. ’Less’n I’m mistaken Pastors Holt and Dawes are already beginning Holy Communion: I can feel the life flowing back into me as I stand.” He takes a step forward, then another, gathering strength as he moves. A few seconds later he lets his arm drop from his handmaid. “Follow me. Alex’s men will be here soon. We need to be on the other side to unseal our Lord’s tomb.”

The cathedral-sized building on the other side of the gate awes Roseanne. She’s dreamed of it for years, even before Father Ray took her for a handmaiden; dreaming in awe and ecstasy that she might be the one to quicken the Lord in His sleep. It’s far above her place to hold such dreams, she knows, but even so she is determined to be present at the second coming, and she feels an icy spike of rage at the flippant Englishman who so foolishly turned down Father Ray’s generous offer. She tightens her grip on her gun’s foregrip. For a butterfly- ticklish moment she’d almost thought Father Ray was going to offer her to the Englishman as part of his ludicrous list of bribes, not that she does not welcome the idea of fulfilling her duty to be fertile and submit to the husband he will eventually choose for her, but the hot flush she felt for a few seconds in the vestry has left her disconcerted and angry with herself for sinning in her soul.

And so, as she follows the holy father through the portal to the holy sepulcher, her mind is not entirely focussed on the job.

JOHNNY ROLLS AS HE HITS THE FLOOR—TOO SLOWLY, ALTHOUGH the bullets cracking above his head like maddened wasps are as fast as normal—and bolts sideways, away from the direct sight-line of the gate.

He knows this place. He heard stories about it on his father’s knee as a wean; he knows the layout, for the village kirk reproduced it in miniature. It’s in his blood, and he knows just how desperate Schiller must be to complete this ritual now that he’s here.

(Set a thief to catch a thief. Johnny will be having some pointed words with the Auditors when he gets home, by and by, if Persephone doesn’t get to them first; and then there will be a pointed debate among the invisible collegiate membership of Mahogany Row. But that’s of no matter right now. What matters here is preventing Schiller from completing the service of possession that he’s trying to carry out—that, and maybe escaping with his skin intact. And the Duchess and that Howard guy Lockhart sent along on this caper as an understudy.)

There’s the nave: there, at the front of it is the Altar of the Sleeping Christ, as dad called it—more like the cryonic suspension capsule of an alien nightmare, if you look at it without god-glazed eyes. The ground is shaking slightly beneath his feet. Are the support systems coming online already? They’re elder gods to the superstitious neolithic tribes who had worshiped them, ancient astronauts if you want a more modern metaphor. They’re nameless and inhuman horrors, either way. There are benches in the nave, half-melted looking things made out of some kind of crystalline mineral. They’re sized for humans but each seating position is punctuated by a gully in just the right position to accommodate a stumpy tail.

Johnny duck-walks behind a pew as the first two bodyguards bound through the gate. He can feel his skin crawling with power in this place, and the throb of blood in his ears is disturbing: there’s a curious sense of euphoria, a giddy light-headedness that seems to come on the back of the distant hymns of damnation filtering through the gate from the church sanctuary back in Colorado Springs. The sacrifices. He’s beginning the sacrificial ceremony. Johnny freezes for a couple of seconds, during which the next two bodyguards arrive and fan out on either side of the gate. The sacrifice of souls joyfully given by their owners is the most potent part of the ritual, necessary to power the invocation that will awaken the Sleeper. All it takes are donations of circulatory fluid from two members of the blood, descended from the ranks of the Sleeper’s chosen priesthood— there is some archaic genetic manipulation at work here, and other, more arcane processes—and the rite of awakening may be performed. Fuck, he’s beginning. He needs me here. Willing, or…?

With a pang of embarrassment, Johnny McTavish realizes that he might have made a really bad error of judgment. Not merely bad: the worst. In which case there’s really only one thing he can do.

Johnny stands and shouts, “Over here, motherfuckers!”

Heads whip round.

Then knives fly.

*     *     *

“HAND OF GLORY,” SNAPS PERSEPHONE, HOLDING OUT AN OPEN palm just as I hear a couple of gunshots.

I drop to the floor behind a row of church pews perfectly suited to the hindquarters of deep ones. “I’ve got it