In the predawn gloom, lights burned on the top floor of Fraser House, the twenty-three-story tower block on Brentford Estate that Blood of Christ had made its home. Tony stood beside the mobile command center and peered at the six identical gray blocks through the night-vision goggles Glen had handed him. Soldiers and police were fanning out across the football field butting on to the back of the estate, keeping low as they scuttled toward the building. Similar movements were taking place all around the estate, creating an impenetrable circle.
They’d finally caught a break in their hunt for Archangel the previous day when a policeman witnessed three members of the group corner a frail old imam out for a stroll along the side of the Thames in Brentford. As the blows began to rain down, the officer followed his instructions to shoot on sight when confronted with members of the extremist group. He killed two of the attackers and the surviving member took off running. In his blind panic he sprinted back to Fraser House. Fortunately, the copper had been smart enough to follow at a distance rather than go rushing in and had noted the armed men guarding the entrance to the building. He then lurked behind a bush for half an hour until Archangel himself emerged, surrounded by bodyguards.
Tony had wasted no time getting Glen and Frank to pull together an assault force. Sections of the city had been unprotected for the night as a result, but whatever chaos took place was a price worth paying to be rid of these maniacs. Tony shouldn’t really have been there since he did have a country to run, but he needed to see Archangel brought low, and he would be back in the office by 8:00 a.m. if all went well. As he watched the soldiers take up their positions, he felt confident they were about to bring the extremist rabble to heel. As fervent as the madmen were, they would be no match for a well-drilled fighting force. And stopping their cross-channel jaunts would surely buy him enough time to get the missile ready.
“They could’ve picked somewhere a bit nicer to hole up,” said Frank, who’d stuck his head out of the command center.
It was a good point. Decades of rocketing house prices had seen people scrimp and save to get their feet on the property ladder only to find the gap between the first and higher rungs impossible to bridge. Even a pokey flat in one of the tower blocks they were looking at had been going for around 150,000, a sum that would have purchased a mansion, with enough change to buy a sports car and maintain a few floozies to drape over it, when Tony was a young man. The virus turned the property ladder into a trampoline. When the initial wave of violence faded and survivors emerged from the camps, they at first returned to their own homes. The mass upgrading started when looters realized the deserted homes they were ransacking could be taken over wholesale. With so many empty properties, those who jumped earliest and hardest got whatever they wanted. A mass exodus to the largely empty posh districts took place. Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Chelsea, Kensington, Mayfair, and all the other areas once reserved for those with bulging wallets were now thoroughly degentrified—stuffed with the kind of plebs the previous residents would have called the police on if they so much as stopped to tie a shoelace outside their houses. A group of particularly ambitious travelers had even taken up residence in Buckingham Palace, replacing the corgis with Alsatians. Tony had taken the decision to let everyone get on with it. If they ever extricated themselves from the mess they were in and people started returning home, they could sort it all out then.
“It’s more defensible. Archangel is probably at the top, so our boys are going to have to fight their way up floor by floor,” said Glen, who’d been in a splendid mood since being given the okay to prepare the missile.
Tony hadn’t revealed his true intentions to anyone, not even Amira, who kept bending his ear. He was worried that if he told her what he was really planning she would let it slip to Glen just to get one over on him. It was better to let Glen focus on getting this ultimate deterrent ready. Once the sub was at sea and the international community was suitably cowed, he would inform Glen that the missile wouldn’t be fired and deal with the fallout.
“Well, it has to be done,” Tony said. “If these nutters get caught trying to get over to France again this country is toast.”
The radio crackled into life with the mission commander’s voice. “All units in place.”
“Operation is go,” Glen said.
Tony looked through his binoculars again. Soldiers sprang up from their crouched positions and ran toward the entrance of the tower block. They kicked in the doors and poured inside, guns at the ready.
“Come on, Tony,” Frank said. “You’re going to miss the show.”
He clambered into the cramped interior of the vehicle and peered at the monitors relaying the view from the helmet-cam of each unit leader. One of the screens showed a boot splintering a doorframe. The others displayed jiggling views of a dimly lit staircase.
“Units two through five, secure each floor before moving on. Unit six, guard the exit. Unit one, go straight to the top and secure the principal target,” Glen said.
Tony felt slightly nauseated as one of the cameras continued its crazy wiggle upward. “Why can’t they take the lift?”
“They always smell of piss,” Frank said.
“Come on, that’s such a cliché.”
“Clichés come from somewhere, don’t they? Every time we had to nick somebody in a tower block, we held our noses on the way up.”
“So they don’t have flushing toilets in their expensive flats and have to take a slash in the lift?”
“No, but little boys like to pee through the crack in the door to hear the noise it makes on the way down. It’s worse in the bigger blocks, because there are more of the little toerags and they have more time in the lift to let it rip.”
“It isn’t because it smells of piss,” Glen said. “It’s too dangerous. When the door opens at the top, it would only take one grenade tossed in, and they’d all be dead.”
As the lead team continued upward, the labored breathing of the soldiers apparent, Tony glanced at the other monitors. Door after door was kicked in to reveal uninhabited homes.
“Where is everybody?” Tony said.
“Maybe there weren’t as many of them as we thought,” Glen said. “As long as Archangel’s up there, we’re all good.”
“They had guards yesterday,” Tony said, beginning to get a bad feeling.
Unit one finally reached the top floor. The camera showed a view of a long, silent corridor. The soldiers edged along the wall, applying boot to wood at each apartment. Again, they were all empty. When they got to the last flat—the one with the lights on—the unit leader panned his camera around.
“Nobody here, sir,” he said.
“Are we sure this is the right tower block?” Tony said.
In answer, the squad leader picked up a piece of paper from the coffee table and held it up to his camera. The Blood of Christ logo was visible at the top, although the resolution of the camera made it difficult to read the handwritten text.
“What’s it say?” Frank asked.
“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. I will halt the arrogance of the proud. Isaiah 13:11. You cannot stop us, Mr. Campbell. We are tools of the Lord’s will. Archangel.”
“They knew we were coming,” Tony said, resisting the urge to punch the screen. “How did they know we were coming?”
“Somebody must have told them,” Glen said.
“You mean we’ve got a leak?”
“They’ve got sympathizers everywhere.”
This time Tony did wallop the screen, regretting the decision when it turned out to be hard glass. He communed with Spock briefly and, sucking his knuckles, turned to Frank. “Why didn’t we post some lookouts after we found out where they were hiding?”
“We didn’t want to take the chance of alerting them,” Frank said.
Tony stood beneath the light and dropped his chin so it shone on the front of his head. An imaginary laser bored a hole between Frank’s eyes. Frank, unaware his brain had just been turned into Swiss cheese, pulled at his ear. Tony sighed. Chewing Frank out would accomplish nothing now, so he kept his voice level and said, “Well, they were alerted. Find out who did it. We’re going to get these sods. Next time I want them to know nothing until we hit them.”
Frank nodded. “I’ll get on it.”
“We should head up there,” Glen said. “Maybe they left something behind that’ll help us figure out where they went.”
They went up in the lift, which did indeed smell of piss. The strong stench of urine acted as smelling salts and helped clear Tony’s head. This was nothing more than a setback. He only needed to keep Blood of Christ quiet for another week; with luck the disruption of having to move headquarters at such short notice would keep them occupied for that period.
When he entered Archangel’s lair, there was nothing to suggest it had been the epicenter of a terrifying movement. Apart from the sheet of paper, everything had been cleared out save the bland Ikea furniture. They would get no leads here. Still, there must have been witnesses to the pullout. They would find these people, locate the new headquarters, and finish it once and for all. Feeling a lot better, he turned to leave. His satphone rang. He wrestled it out from the clip attached to his belt. God, he missed his mobile phone. This beast made him feel like a 1980s stock market trader.
“Hey, love,” he said, expecting to hear Margot’s voice. When he left before Vanessa woke, she always called so he could say good morning.
“Hello, Mr. Campbell. How do you like my apartment?”
Tony clamped his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s him. Get a trace on it!”
“We can’t even trace a kid’s drawing right now, never mind a satphone,” Frank said. “Most of our tech got trashed when everybody went bonkers.”
“Shit. Look, he knows we’re here. That means somebody must be watching us. Get some men out and find them.”
As soldiers ran from the room, Tony got back on the line. “How did you get this number?”
“Same place I got the information that you were coming after us. I just thought I’d say hello before I set off the explosives we’ve seeded through the building. So, hello. I’m pressing the button now.”
Tony’s bowels loosened. He couldn’t even open his mouth to get out a warning. It would be too late anyway. They would never get down twenty-three floors before the bombs went off. As he waited for the boom that would herald his end, all he could think about was that there would be nobody left to protect Margot and Vanessa.
In lieu of a gigantic explosion, a tinny chuckle came from the phone. “Did I scare you? I just wanted you to know I could have killed you. But you’re not my enemy, Mr. Campbell. I want to give you a chance to come over.”
Tony, simultaneously weak with relief and throbbing with the desire to reach down the phone and pull out Archangel’s larynx, took a few seconds to compose himself before replying. “Come over to what?”
“Our crusade. You can’t deny this world has got out of control. Single mothers spitting out mewling brats, who will grow up to spit out more mewling brats ad infinitum. Muslims with five wives and thirty children, all of them determined to destroy Christianity. Godless, directionless hordes of atheists turning to tai chi and meditation to fill the gaping holes in their tawdry little souls. All of them destroying this beautiful world God gave us to watch over. Humanity is a plague, Mr. Campbell. It’s time for a cull.”
Even though his words were pure madness, Archangel’s voice remained utterly reasonable, as though he were laying out the merits of building a new bypass.
“I’m asking you to stop this,” Tony said. “If you keep trying to get the virus out, you’ll get us all killed. Give us a chance.”
“No, Mr. Campbell. You’re going to get us killed by doing nothing. Do you think you can appease these people with your press releases and statements? If we die, God’s purifying weapon dies with us. I cannot allow that.”
“Killing isn’t God’s work.”
“Have you read the Old Testament? God was partial to unleashing plagues upon those who displeased him. We have displeased him greatly this time. He created a world of balance and harmony. We have disturbed that harmony. Think of all the wars we have fought, Mr. Campbell, of all the new diseases that nature produces, of all the famines and natural disasters. God has been trying to keep us in line for many years, trying to pare back our numbers. We kept pushing back with science and medicine and diplomacy, ignoring his message. Now he is taking drastic action, using the weapon of science against us. I am the instrument that will spread this, his greatest plague, and save our world.”
“But you’re talking about turning the whole world into murderers. They’ll tear each other apart. Billions will die.”
Glen frowned, and Tony realized that he wasn’t sounding like a man who’d given the order to do exactly what Blood of Christ aimed to achieve. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m just trying to talk him down,” he told Glen.
“Is it wrong?” Archangel said. “Consider the Last Supper. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.’ There is a precedent.”
Tony decided to toss diplomacy out the window. “That was a metaphor, you bloody nutbag, not an invitation to cannibalism. Even if you’re insane enough to take it literally, which you clearly are, he was asking his disciples to eat him. He wasn’t inviting everybody to gnaw each other’s faces.”
“It was a message for the faithful,” Archangel said, unperturbed by Tony’s insult. “Make no mistake. We will cleanse the world, with you or without you. When we are finished, only a handful of true believers will stand to carry on God’s work. It seems you won’t be one of them. Good-bye, Mr. Campbell.”
The line went dead, leaving Tony gaping at the phone.
“What’d he say?” Frank asked.
“To paraphrase: blah blah blah, I’m completely off my fucking trolley, blah blah blah,” Tony said, shaking his head in wonder. “Keep looking for the mole and find out where Archangel’s gone to. I’m going back to the office.”
When Tony got downstairs, he waved away the driver. It had been months since he took public transport, and he felt the need to be amongst the people. Archangel’s insanity had got him thinking. As far as he could tell, Moran had been a normal pastor before the virus. His mind must have cracked when he killed, and Tony wanted to gauge how widespread this mental instability was. He could only imagine what it must have been like to emerge from the viral daze with blood on your hands, for he’d never taken a life.
The self-inflicted blows to his head had kept him out for a day; when he finally came to, Margot and Vanessa were both infected—from the vaporized snot Margot said started exploding from his nose shortly after she emerged from the toilet. The first thing he did was hold them close, wetting their heads with his tears, and ask them to forgive him. Margot told him there was nothing to forgive, as he’d fought the virus, while Vanessa brushed it off as though he’d come home grumpy from the office. They holed up, living on chocolates and nuts raided from the minibars of other rooms, until the awful sound track of screams and gunfire receded. While the bloodshed was still going on, Tony had stayed far from the window, terrified that if he saw the carnage he would be seized with an urge to join in. When they finally emerged to trek home, the streets were empty save for twisted, ruined bodies thick with buzzing flies. He’d spent most of the days on the road with one hand supporting Vanessa’s behind, the other over her eyes, wishing there was somebody to carry him and close his eyes. No, he hadn’t killed—he’d never seen another uninfected person since—but that awful journey and the memory of what he’d almost done to his wife and child had been enough to push him close to the edge.
He walked to South Ealing tube station. It was still early, but when he boarded the train there were a few dozen early-morning commuters. He couldn’t see any overt signs of mental torment. He didn’t even know how many people had taken a life. The animals took care of a big chunk to start with, over ten million fled the country, and the army shot dead many more—most of the dead he saw seemed to have died from bullet wounds. Despite what zombie films would have people believe, he suspected it was damn hard to bite somebody to death. Then there were the famously bad British teeth. Overbites and teeth sprouting off in different directions would surely have hampered efforts to rip out a jugular. Plus you had to consider the speed with which the virus took over its host; many attacks would have been curtailed as victim and victimizer joined forces to look for fresh prey. Plenty of blunt force would have been applied, he supposed, which could account for a lot of deaths, and the mob factor definitely made it worse. Still, since he hadn’t killed anyone it stood to reason there were many more in the same position. It was difficult to know, as nobody talked about that period: it was as though a collective amnesia had descended over the nation.
As the train filled up, he noticed something else. In his carriage at least four women were pregnant, and, up in the far corner, a couple was indulging in heavy petting. Everybody stared at them. Their soft moans and the vibration of the tube prompted movement down below. He crossed his legs. A slim young woman with red hair and full lips caught his eye and gave him a saucy smile. He smiled back and held up his ring finger. She pouted and turned her attention elsewhere.
He was struck then by the strange dichotomy of the virus: how people were so ashamed of their anger but embraced the sexual aspect. The animals had mindlessly humped whatever came within range, but they were prone to a spot of random humping anyway. And they never actually raped anybody: they couldn’t exactly take off clothes with hooves or paws and wouldn’t have known where to put it. As far as he could tell the urge to do violence had overwhelmed the sexual element in humans. Perhaps it was a matter of expediency: it was quicker to bite somebody and pass on the virus than struggle with clothing. Now there were no uninfected around to fully unleash the beast, the virus seemed to have turned Britain into a nation of full-time slappers, instead of only shaking off their straitlaced attitudes when under the influence of drugs and booze. The Sun, the only newspaper still publishing, predictably loved it and ran stories with headlines like, “Brits Go BONKers!”
Perhaps people were happier to give in because sex was fundamentally a consensual act, and both parties usually enjoyed it—unless the man had a hair trigger or thought foreplay consisted of shouting, “Brace yourself!” Violence, on the other hand, was rarely consensual. Perhaps it was a choice: when handed two opposing urges, one more benign than the other, the easiest course was to take the more pleasurable. Rapists still raped of course, and Tony came down hard on any offenders, but rape was an act of violence. It was about power and control, not about sex.
If only they could create a selective cure for the virus, one that lost violent impulses and kept the sexual ones. That way the country would be transformed from a dystopia to a utopia overnight, and they wouldn’t have any problem getting the population back up quickly.
As he looked along the carriage, plastered with Keep Calm and Carry On ads, he understood most people were trying to have a normal life. Tony had spent far too long cloistered away in his offices and in the car and was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t overestimated the severity of the situation. Extreme cases aside, the virus seemed to have translated into more arguments, a lot more sex, and an inability to queue. They’d become Italian. Of course, all of this only applied when the uninfected weren’t around. The acid test would come if they ever got the chance to reintegrate with the world. For that to happen, they needed to learn to control themselves come the crunch. He was beginning to wonder if he should make an effort to engage with the people handing out the leaflets.
He looked again at his fellow passengers: his people, his responsibility. He focused on one woman, her hand supporting her protruding stomach, and imagined the baby growing within. If the attack took place, that unborn child and many like it, the epitome of innocence, would never have a chance to grow up. He wouldn’t let that happen.
First, though, he had other matters to deal with. His erection was refusing to deflate by itself, and he caught himself checking out the redhead. He got off the train early, taking off his jacket and draping it over his arm so it hid his groin, with the intention of paying Margot a conjugal visit. There would be no point trying to work with such an insistent stiffy.