The Apocalypse Codex

After wrestling my way out of the car park (hopefully without leaving too many paint scrapes on the concrete pillars), I drive for miles beneath sullen clouds that weep a thin drizzle of sleet. The skyscrapers slowly give way to big box stores, drive-ins, streets of cookie-cutter houses, then finally scrub separating anonymous industrial units. More miles and I come to a highway with signage for the airport. Apparently it used to be a strategic bomber base—a flat pancake of snow-capped concrete stretching for kilometers in every direction.

I stick the car in a short-stay car park and head into the terminal, looking for the British Airways desk. It’s the regular cattle market of check-in areas and retail concessions, leavened by more public art and shopping than usual for an American airport; there are a lot of delays flashing on the departure board, probably the better to cause the punters to part with their money, and the concourse is heaving with bewildered-looking travelers. I must have hit rush hour or something. It takes me a while to get oriented and home in on the desk. “Good evening,” I start, then lay what I hope is a winning hand on the counter: my return open biz-class booking, a passport with a diplomatic visa, and the Coutts card. “I’ve been called back to London at short notice. What can you do for me?”

The clerk on the other side of the counter is clearly perturbed. “Would you mind waiting here for a minute, sir? I’d like to fetch my manager.” Oops, not good. Any one of those cards should be sufficient to trigger a bowing and scraping reflex. I nod, and while her back’s turned I pull out my wallet and palm my fourth and final card, just in case. The skin on the back of my neck is itching: every time an airport cop walks past I have to forcibly suppress the urge to stare.

A few seconds later she’s back, with an older BA staff member in tow—this one wearing the kind of uniform suit that says “management.” “Excuse me, sir,” she says, assertive with a side order of London accent that’s barely been here long enough to go native, “I’m told you need to rebook a ticket?”

I smile at her without showing my teeth. “Not exactly.” Open passport, display visa. “Head Office want me home on the next available flight. I was hoping to rebook my ticket”—tap finger on full-fat business class booking confirmation—“or, failing that, perhaps you could arrange something? Via corporate?” Wave platinum card. Her eyes are tracking my fingers but her expression is saying something else.

“I’m really sorry, sir,” she says, looking as if she means it, “I’d love to sort you out, and normally it wouldn’t be a problem, but all departures are grounded as of an hour ago.”

“What?” I can’t help myself.

“It’s the incoming weather system. There’s a huge storm coming down from Canada and it’s threatening to drop twenty or thirty inches of snow on us overnight; as if that isn’t enough, there’s a tornado warning out. It’s a weather bomb. They’re still landing inbound flights, but nothing’s going out before tomorrow at the earliest, and between you and me I reckon the airport will be closed until early afternoon, if not all day, if that ice storm is as bad as they’re saying.”

I show my teeth, but keep my warrant card back. “Are you sure? Is it possible to charter a bizjet? Just to one of the main hubs, I mean, not all the way to Heathrow.”

She’s shaking her head. “I’m sorry, sir, but nothing’s moving. They’re even grounding the traffic news helicopters. It’ll be the rescue and air ambulance services next. Never seen anything like it. If you want, I can—let’s see, I can bump you to first class standby on the next available flight, and if you leave your cell number with me I can—”

I shake my head. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll drive out.” And I gather up my papers and leave before she can get started on arguing me out of the idea because I’m afraid she might be right: driving through an apocalyptic ice storm in a convertible isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

However, I do not get a chance to maroon myself in the Rockies in the middle of a blizzard.

It’s not for want of trying, but as I drive out of the airport the snow is beginning to fall. I turn on the windscreen wipers and headlights and turn east, out along the interstate. Traffic is surprisingly light in both directions. Then, after about five miles the traffic begins to thicken up and I see flashing lights ahead. A couple of highway patrol cars are drawn up across the road, light bars strobing, and the cops are out with illuminated batons, waving cars over to one side for an inspection—

No, it’s an off-ramp. I slow, going where I’m directed. They don’t wave me over, but keep pointing around the curve of the cloverleaf. More cops. Another diversion. I realize what’s going on just before I hit the next cloverleaf. There’s nobody behind me, so I slow and wind down my window.

The cop with the light waves at me, then points on in the direction of the on-ramp back onto the highway in the direction of Denver.

“What’s happening?” I call. (Just another guy in a suit driving a mid-range coupe: not a target.)

“Road’s closed,” he yells. “Git moving.”

I have no desire to stop and argue with the Colorado highway patrol, so I just nod and keep rolling. The air outside my bubble of rental luxury is frigid; I roll up the window and accelerate back up to highway speed, thinking furiously.

Once upon a time an intelligence officer said, Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. I’m not an idiot: I can see the pattern here. First I was doorstepped by the opposition, then I was ordered to scram; meanwhile all flights out of Denver are grounded by an anomalous ice storm, and the cops are closing the roads out of town. Is Schiller really that powerful? The evidence suggests he might be: Lockhart says he has the FBI and local cops in his pocket, and I’m having bad dreams about the Sleeper. Maybe that last one is a coincidence, but if I were a betting man I’d put money on the other stuff being pieces of a really unpleasant jigsaw. I’ve seen anomalous bad weather before, triggered by a greater invocation—

Oh. Oh shit. I do so very badly hope I’m wrong about this.

IT’S LATE AFTERNOON; THE SHADOWS ARE DRAWING IN.

Persephone drives away from the back roads of Pike National Forest without looking in the rearview mirror. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. She doesn’t un-tense them until she hits US85 and sees the long chain-link fence and open spaces of the Air Force Academy unwinding to her left. She’s badly rattled: angry and shaken. It’s an unpleasant sensation, familiar from her half-forgotten childhood, and one she has carefully structured her life to suppress. I fucked up, she realizes coldly. Schiller’s people are on the ball, and if she hadn’t cut and run she’d be in that chapel even now, gulping down the choking wine like blood as the host holds unholy communion with her brain. It’s anybody’s guess whether Johnny is still free; she’s torn between the urge to contact him immediately and warn him, and the fear that she’ll catch him in the middle of a ruck and spoil his aim. Either way it’ll have to wait until she’s far enough from her pursuers to stop for a few minutes.

She forces her emotions back under control as she drives, performing the comforting rituals of scan and evasion with eyes wide open for any hint of pursuit. The sky is gray, almost yellowing, promising bad weather. As the miles unroll behind her, her pulse slows to normal and her grip relaxes slightly. She chews over the day’s events, trying to make sense of them. The church compound and the clinic in the hills, the ghastly combined spinal injuries and maternity ward, the rite of holy communion with unholy parasites, born again in control of their victims’ nervous systems. They’re all parts of a vile jigsaw puzzle, but she has a distinct sense that she’s missing something. “What are they trying to achieve?” she asks aloud. “What does Ray think he’s doing?”

Normally she’d be asking these questions of Johnny. She punches the hub of the steering wheel lightly.

“What did he say…” Why aren’t we saving them?

Schiller clearly believes his own spiel. And he’s a man with a mission—literally as much as figuratively. “Let’s assume he’s serious,” she murmurs to herself. “He believes his God is coming back to ring down the curtain on the day of judgment imminently. He knows he’s saved, but most people are going straight to hell. And let’s also suppose that he isn’t just a sociopath milking a money machine. He’s making all that money because he’s got something to spend it on. He’s going to want to”—her eyes widen—“save everybody, by any means necessary.” She glances sideways by long force of habit, taking in the passenger seat, empty but for an open handbag holding a book and a gun.

Traffic is thickening ahead; for a while she focusses on the brake lights. The exit for Fort Carson comes into view—nearly there. During a slow patch she pulls out the book, lays it in her lap, and steals glances at it as she pushes her way into the right-hand lane, eyes scanning for exit 141. The clouds are darkening, and occasional