The Apocalypse Codex

intend to go for the throat. I want to nail these bastards, Johnny.***

***Whoa, you’re taking it personal, Duchess?***

***You bet I am. But I’m going to be professional about it. See you first thing tomorrow morning.***

SIGNING OFF, SHE OPENS HER EYES TO SEE WHAT KIND OF web her thaumotropic spider has woven.

Beyond the threshold of her room—a yellow outline surrounding a rectangle of slate-gray emptiness—loop vast whorls and spires of sun-yellow energy. Denver itself is a valley, low and dark, but around it rise ramparts of power. A narrow cutting leads towards Colorado Springs, another valley cupped between high walls of compulsion, but near the edge of the city there rises one leg of a towering arch of light. A torrent of power roaring into the sky, coming out of nowhere and leaping out across the plain towards an answering pillar ten miles to the north. It’s so strong it’s right off the scale, a multiple reactor meltdown in the middle of the background field of ambient radiation.

Persephone stares at the arch of power for a subjective minute. Then she swears, clicks her heels together, and vanishes from the Other Place.

I’D SET MY PHONE TO WAKE ME UP AT 7 A.M., BUT I’M AWAKE and dressed and waiting for it three minutes before it sounds.

I go into the motel bathroom and splash water on my face, then shave. There are dark bags under my eyes and, not to put too fine a point on it, I look like something the cat tried to bury. I haven’t had enough sleep, and what sleep I managed to snatch came with an unpleasant freight of dreams: plateau, temple, sleeper, you know the drill.

There is a shitty filter coffee machine and I use it with malice in mind, dunking two whole bags of Starbucks’ oiliest caffeinated charcoal in the cone. As it hisses and burbles I try to check my email on my phone.

Nothing.

Now, there are few existential crises as unnerving for a geek like me (the original feral kind—not your commercialized cash cow as-reimagined-by-Urban-Outfitters-and-Hollywood fashion geek, who is basically a hipster with a neckbeard and worse fashion sense) as being off the net. It takes me a couple of minutes of prodding and poking to determine that the motel’s wifi network is up but has no way of sending packets to the wider internet, and AT&T’s two-wet-shoelaces-and-a-tin-can excuse for wireless broadband has also shat its routing tables and is drooling in a corner. There are a couple of laptops hooked up to the hotel wifi network—I can see their owners’ porn stashes from the shiny new Dell—so it’s not my equipment. Frowning, I check for Google. Nope, and if their private backhaul isn’t talking to the local ISPs we’re in major blackout territory. Following a hunch I punch up the maps app and see if I can get a GPS signal. Nothing, nada.

The coffee pot is making drowning-squirrel noises as I do something I never do in hotel rooms, which is to pick up the TV remote for a purpose other than hammering the “off” button. The in-house check-out channel comes up on the screen, but once I start to channel hop I rapidly confirm an unpleasant suspicion. There are too many dead spots. I can see a local news channel, a couple of community spots where amateur dramatics types are playing with their camcorders in a studio that looks like an abandoned warehouse, and of course the local porn buffet. What I don’t see is anything national: no CNN, no MSNBC, no Hitler Channel or Mythbusters. Not even Top Gear reruns on BBC America. The local cableco is clearly having a spot of bother. Mind you, I do find the God Botherer Channel, where they’re advertising a love-in at some place called the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Live coverage from two o’clock.

I stare at the screen for a minute, jaw hanging slack. Ha. Ha. Very funny. Not. They’re even giving directions for how to get there, for any locals crazy enough to drive in this weather, and a special dispensation from Lord Jeebus to say that his faithful won’t have to worry about doing four-wheel drifts into oncoming snowplows. Raymond Schiller, Impresario and Evangelist. On stage in the New Life Church this afternoon at three. Bring all the family! A first-class production is guaranteed for all.

With a sense of gathering alarm I rummage through my wallet and pull out the Coutts card. I dial the phone number on it and a robot with a nasal whine tells me it has been unable to connect my call and I should try again later.

“Shit,” I say aloud, just as there’s a double-knock on the room door.

I’m not usually prone to flashbacks but a split second later I’m flat against the wall with a stolen revolver clenched uncomfortably in my left hand, heart rattling the bars of my tonsils and screaming to be let out. It takes a second for me to realize that cops wouldn’t knock—they’d break the door down—and it doesn’t feel like MIBs.

Feel? I wonder what’s up with me. Another funny turn?

There’s another knock, quiet and rapid. I slide over, glance through the peephole, and open the door.

“Wotcher, cock,” says Johnny, oozing into the room like a diffident landslide. Persephone is waiting behind him, looking up and down the corridor. She’s positively tap-dancing with impatience. “Nice piece,” Johnny comments.

“Come in,” I say, making sure the gun’s pointing at the floor. Persephone backs inside, then turns and has the door locked and bolted in one fluid motion. “We’re blacked out. No internet, no TV, no GPS, no phone.”

“I love it when a plan comes together.” Johnny pauses for a double beat. “What, it’s not deliberate?”

“We had dialtone at five a.m.,” I tell them. “This is new.”

“Well.” Persephone looks around. “There are roadblocks on the interstates, the airports and general aviation fields are shut down, and now the phone system doesn’t work. It sounds like—”

“Enemy action,” completes Johnny. He glances at me. “You want to get out, or go in?”

“My orders say to get out, so I’m going to leave the other on the table as Plan B,” I say. Persephone is looking at me, with an expression I usually see on Mo’s face when I’ve said something particularly stupid. “What?”

“It’s going to be harder to drive out than you think. There is an open gate near Colorado Springs, and someone—I think Schiller—is using it to power a ward around half the state.” Now I get it. She’s tired and wired, simultaneously. Then I do a double take. Power a what?

“Seems to me we can try and bug out,” Johnny observes. “Might not make it, fair do’s. Or we can drop it in my mate Paddy’s lap and hope the Nazgul can do something with it.”

“Paddy?” I ask.

“An old mate I ran into. He’s making a living as an informer for you know who. ’Course he won’t inform on us unless I ask him to.” He smiles frighteningly. “Or we can go down to see our old friend Ray Schiller and explain the facts of life to him. Pick a card, any card.”

I turn to the table and pick up the coffee jug. Decisions, decisions. There are only two cups. “Johnny, go get us a couple of mugs from Persephone’s room.”

He bristles. “Hey, you don’t—”

“Johnny, do what the nice man says,” Persephone’s tone is even. “Take my key.”

I am still pouring the second coffee as the door closes. “How far do you trust him?” I ask, turning round to offer her a mug.

“With my life,” she says, unhesitating. “Only—” She stops. “You noticed it, too. What?”

I take a sip of coffee and grimace. “He’s pushing options at us. And something feels wrong.”

“He had a religious upbringing: he was brought up to be an elder in the very odd church that Schiller comes from. He ran away to join the army to escape. And now it turns out”—she sniffs at her mug: her nose wrinkles—“he is probably having unpleasant flashbacks.”

“Could they have turned him?”

“Out of the question.” She shrugs dismissively. “Johnny’s loyalty is not in question.” Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “If you think we do this only for money—”

“So you want to go in,” I say, as the door opens, “find out what he’s using to power the gate and close it. Right?”

There’s a heavy chunk as Johnny puts a mug down on the desk top. “You’ve got a