The Storm (3 page)

They were vermin, all of them.

Men and women and children teemed over the dead grass of the holiday park, their eyes black and small and empty, their teeth bared. They swarmed from caravans and chalets and cars, blind to anything but their own hate. Some tripped and were quickly drowned in the stampede. More thumped into each other, the slap of flesh against flesh almost as loud as the thunder of footsteps. Others shrieked and howled, the air alive with the cries of the damned. And they
were
damned, there was no doubt about that.

‘Are you ready, little brother?’ Rilke asked, turning to Schiller. He stood stooped next to her, pale and frightened and weak. He looked so tired, the flesh of his face loose, the corners of his mouth turned down like a sad clown’s. The ground shook as the ferals flocked closer, the first of them – a huge, hairy ape of a man dressed in shorts and a vest – now ten metres away. Close enough to smell. Oh how she hated them, these parasites. Once upon a time she would have been scared, but not any more. Now there was only fury – 
her
fury, as white and as hot and as dangerous as their own. ‘Schiller,’ she said. ‘Do it.’

‘Please, Rilke,’ he started, but she cut him off, grabbing his arm and twisting hard. Behind him stood Jade and Marcus with faces like sheep. The new boy, the one they had found in Hemsby, lay between them, still frozen. Rilke turned back to her brother.

‘
Do it
.’

Schiller might have been reluctant, but the creature inside him was eager. Her brother’s eyes blazed, so bright that it looked as though a furnace had been fired up inside his skull. In a heartbeat the flames had spread, a second skin that wrapped him in angry light, and he opened his mouth in a silent scream of fire. With a snap like a pistol shot his wings punched through his shoulders, blasting out a shockwave that kicked up dust and sand and sent the first line of ferals rolling back into the crowd. Those wings beat slowly, almost lazily, forged of flame. The sheer power there made the air tremble, a generator hum that seemed to pull reality apart. She had to bite her tongue and screw her eyes shut to stop the vertigo, and when she looked again Schiller was already at work.

There had to be a hundred of them, fast and hard and angry. They didn’t seem scared by Schiller’s transformation. If anything, it seemed to incense them even further. They threw themselves at the burning boy, hands like claws, the same awful, guttural cries barked from their throats. A hundred of them, and they never stood a chance.

Schiller opened his arms, the air around him shimmering. He was hovering off the ground now, ripples spreading outwards over the dirt like it was water. The hairy man came apart with a soft pop, his atomised body holding its shape for a fraction of a second before drifting away. Others ran through his floating remains before disintegrating with the same speed, the sound like somebody playing with bubble wrap. But still they kept coming, until a churning cloud hung before Schiller, as dark and as thick as smoke.

‘Rilke!’ She turned to see Jade screaming as more ferals approached from behind them. A couple of teenage boys led this crowd. Both threw themselves on Marcus, tumbling into a tangle of limbs and teeth. Three more followed, piling on to the skinny boy until he was lost. Others ran for Jade, and more still turned towards Rilke.
Don’t be afraid of them, they are rats,
she ordered herself, but the fear turned her legs to stone. She didn’t have Schiller’s powers, not yet. She was still a pathetic human, nine pints of blood in a paper shell. They would tear her apart as easily as pulling petals from a plant.

‘Schill!’ she cried. A woman leapt for her, tripping on one of Marcus’s flailing arms and falling short. A man followed, raking nails across her face and making her stumble backwards. Then she was falling, the man’s other hand grabbing for her throat, his eyes black pits of utter hatred.

She never hit the ground. The air beneath her grew solid, holding her up. The man was moving, but impossibly slowly. His fingers were almost frozen in front of her neck, like a piece of film playing at one tenth of the right speed. She could see the dirt beneath his nails, the tarnished sovereign ring on his pinkie finger. Spittle flew from his lips, rising almost gracefully, hanging in the sun like a dewdrop.

Everything seemed to have stopped, time grinding reluctantly along its axis. One of the ferals sitting on Marcus was lifting a fist, a pearl of dark blood suspended from her knuckles. Others were still approaching, their sprint now a snail crawl. Rilke found herself laughing, her own movements sluggish too, as though she was swimming in a lake of treacle. She was still falling, she realised, but so slowly that it felt as though she was still.

Only Schiller was immune. He floated through the crowds until he was standing next to Rilke, then he pressed a fiery hand against the man’s chest. This one didn’t explode into dust. He folded in half with a chorus of breaking bones, then folded again, and again, until he was no bigger than a matchbox. Schiller flicked him away, then turned his attention to the other ferals. Even if they hadn’t been moving in slow motion they couldn’t have fought him. All her brother did was turn his palms towards the sky and every feral man, woman and child in sight jerked upwards like a puppet on a string. They came apart as they rose, limbs popping loose, clothes and skin torn into patchwork, teeth and fingernails spinning free, all linked by spirals of blood – rising until they were as tiny as distant birds, then vanishing.

Time seemed to remember itself then, wrapping its fingers around Rilke and pulling her to the floor. Her ears popped, her heart juddering for a handful of beats before finding its rhythm. Marcus squirmed on the ground before noticing that his attackers were gone, while Jade sat in a heap, her eyes glazed, a little more of her sanity rubbed away. Rilke scrabbled to her feet, planting her hands on her knees to stop herself from falling again.

‘All of it,’ she said. She coughed, said it again. ‘All of it, Schill. We don’t want to leave anything.’

He looked at her, those unblinking eyes like portals to another world. Staring into them brought on a creeping kind of madness, one that made her sick to her stomach. The vibration in the air intensified and she could feel a finger of blood wind its way down from her ear. But she didn’t look away.

‘Now, Schiller,’ she said again. And it was her brother who broke, his head dropping. He didn’t even move this time, but all the same the landscape dismantled itself just as it had done in Hemmingway and in Hemsby. Caravans lifted off the ground, doors and windows flapping like agitated limbs as they shook themselves into dust. Chalets crumbled as though made from sand, dropping crumbs as they passed overhead. Cars and bikes and pushchairs broke apart with muffled clanks and rings. Rilke watched them go, a tide of matter that flowed above them like a river, heading over the dunes and out to sea.

Schiller lowered his arms and the remains of the holiday park dropped with a roar like thunder, the water churned into a rage. Rilke felt the salt spray on her face and she wiped it away. She hated the smell of the sea. Maybe if Schiller dropped enough into it then it would dry up, earth and ocean both wiped clean. She turned to him when the echoes had died away, seeing the flames ebb from his skin, the wings folding and fading. As always, his eyes were the last to return to normal, the blazing orange giving way to watery blue. He reeled to one side and she only just reached him before he fell. She lowered him gently to the floor, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

‘You did well, little brother,’ she whispered. ‘You kept us safe.’

He looked half dead, but her words drew a smile. Marcus crouched down beside them, pulling a bottle of water from his rucksack. They had gathered supplies back in Hemsby, before Schiller had razed the little town to the ground. Rilke took the bottle from him, unscrewing the cap and holding it to her brother’s lips. He drank deep, as though trying to quench a fire that still burned inside him.

‘Thanks, Schill,’ said Marcus. ‘I didn’t think I was getting out of that one.’

She took a sip of water herself then handed the bottle back to him.

‘Nothing will happen to us,’ she said. ‘We’re too important.’

‘I know,’ Marcus replied, but he was frowning.

‘What?’ she snapped. She was exhausted. They hadn’t slept since Fursville. They had tried on the way to Hemsby, in a hollow between the dunes, but the police had found them after about half an hour and Schiller had been forced to take care of them. They’d been on the move since, and the police had apparently decided to leave them alone. Either that or there were no police left nearby – her brother had shown them absolutely no mercy.

‘Nothing, Rilke,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s just . . . there are so many of them, and some of them were kids.’

Her anger boiled up her throat but she clamped her mouth shut before it could break free. She couldn’t blame Marcus for having doubts, even with everything that he had seen. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had moments of denial as the crowds had disintegrated before her eyes, especially the children. There had been babies here too, newborns with wrinkled faces who had screamed with a fury they could never hope to understand.

Yet the truth was unmistakable and inescapable. They were here to humble the human race, to make it understand that there was a higher power, that the illusion of free rein, of impunity, was just that: an illusion. They were the angels of death, the great flood and the cleansing fire. People were bad. Rilke knew that better than anyone.
They’re all like him, like the bad man,
she thought, thinking of her mother’s doctor, his bad breath and his greedy fingers.
Deep down they all have secrets, they’re all rotten
. Marcus was just having doubts because he hadn’t turned yet, that was all. As soon as his angel hatched then he’d see the truth. Schiller had turned, and he knew.

‘We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we, little brother,’ she said, but it wasn’t a question. Schiller looked at her with those big, sad eyes, eventually nodding.

‘I think so,’ he said.

‘You know so.’ Rilke suddenly remembered an incident a few years ago, when she and Schiller had been playing at home – she didn’t remember what, exactly, just that they were both running – and she had knocked one of their mother’s china dolls from the sideboard in the dining room. It had broken into a thousand pieces, and for an instant her life was over. Their mother was just starting to lose it back then, the insanity slowly rotting the foundations of her mind, and she loved those dolls more than she loved her own children. Breaking one was a serious crime, one punishable by a beating. So she convinced Schiller to take the blame. He had argued at first – he was more scared of their mother than she was – but he was weak, always weak, and it didn’t take long to break him. By the time they walked upstairs and Schiller confessed his crime, Rilke was sure that he actually believed he was guilty.

Why was she thinking about that now?

‘You
know
so,’ she said again, smoothing a hand over his head. When she lifted it there were clumps of his hair woven between her fingers like seaweed and she wiped them off on her skirt. ‘Trust me, Schiller.’

He tried to push himself up but didn’t have the strength, dropping on to his back. His forehead was slick with sweat, his skin grey.
It’s just tiredness,
she told herself.
We need to find somewhere to rest, to sleep
. But there was another thought there too:
It’s killing him
. She pushed it aside. What Schiller had inside him was a miracle, something good. It made him strong, it kept him safe. It wouldn’t do anything to hurt him.

‘I see things,’ her brother said, looking up at the sky. ‘When it happens, when I turn, I see things.’

‘Like what?’ Rilke asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s something bad. It’s like a man, but a bad man. I can’t see his face, only . . . I don’t know, it’s like he’s living inside a tornado or something. I keep seeing him, Rilke. He scares me.’

‘Forget about it, little brother,’ she said. But she had seen him too, in the quiet moments between sleep and waking, a creature even more powerful than her brother. The man in the storm. ‘It’s one of us,’ she said. ‘It’s here for the same reason we are. Don’t worry about it, he’s on our side.’

Schiller seemed to chew on her words, but not for long. Never for long.
You broke the doll, Schill, it was your fault it smashed, but it’s okay because I’ll be with you when you tell Mother, I’m always here for you, I love you. You’re a good boy, tell her you broke it.

‘You’re a good boy, Schill,’ she said as she smoothed her hand down his shirt. ‘We’ll get through this together. You know I’m always here for you.’

He nodded, and the park fell silent. Even the sea seemed subdued, the small waves barely making a sound as they lapped against the shore.
It’s scared of us,
she thought.
It wants us to leave
.

‘I’m really tired, Rilke,’ Schiller said. ‘Can we stop?’

‘Soon,’ she replied. ‘When we find a safe place.’

This would be so much easier if she had turned too, but the angel inside her showed no sign of hatching. The only reason she even knew it was there was because of the headaches she had suffered –
thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump
– and then the Fury. It
was
there, though, and sooner or later she would be born again with the same powers as her brother.

And when that happened . . .

Rilke grinned, the thought blasting away the last scraps of exhaustion. She got to her feet, pulling Schiller up beside her. The world had never seemed so big, and they had so much work to do.

‘One more town, little brother, can you do that?’

He sighed, then nodded.

‘Good boy.’

She waited for Marcus and Jade to hoist up the new kid, letting him hang between them. They were shivering, but they knew better than to argue with her. Rilke held her brother’s arm, taking some of his weight, and together they set off across the ruined land, kicking up the dust of the dead behind them.