Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

They had come for the diary.

Slowly, determinedly, they closed in on the house.

There were more than a dozen of them: nightmare figures, shuffling across the lawn. Where had they come from? Matt could imagine them climbing out of the local cemetery. There was something corpse-like about them. A gleam of light from the living room caught one of their faces and he saw glistening bone, one empty eye socket, dried blood streaking down the side of the cheek and neck. At that moment he was sure of it. These creatures couldn’t be killed. They were already dead.

As if to prove him wrong, Professor Chambers stepped forward and fired a shot at the nearest of them. Matt saw a great gout of blood explode out of the back of its head. It fell face down and lay, shuddering in the grass. So at least they could be stopped! She fired again, hitting another of them in the shoulder. The creature twitched as if shrugging off the bullet. Blood spread across what was left of its shirt. But it kept on coming. It didn’t seem to feel pain.

Richard was already on his feet, loading the revolver that he had taken from the gun cabinet. A few weeks before, Matt had smiled when he had stumbled across him, shooting tin cans in the desert. Now he was glad that Richard had decided to practise.

When the attack had begun, Scott and Jamie had snatched up a couple of makeshift weapons – anything they could get their hands on. Jamie had a baseball bat. Scott had found a kitchen knife which he was holding in front of him, the blade slanting up. Pedro had backed away to the other side of the room. He was standing with his back to a full-length window, his eyes darting left and right, waiting for the first attack.

He hadn’t looked behind him.

“Pedro…! Watch out!” Richard shouted the warning.

One of the creatures was looming out of the shadows on the other side of the glass. Pedro spun round just in time to see a dead, white face, staring eyes, grey lips, hands stretching towards him. The creature didn’t stop. It walked straight through the window, smashing the glass which cascaded all around it, and came into the room with blood streaming down its face. Shards of broken glass were sticking out of its flesh, but it didn’t seem to notice. Richard lifted his revolver and shot it twice in the head. It crumpled and fell at Pedro’s feet. At the same time, Richard twisted round and fired again. Another of the creatures had reached the open French windows and was about to step inside. It threw up its hands and fell back with a bullet between its eyes.

But there were still many more of them moving slowly across the lawn, unafraid of dying, determined only to reach the house. Perhaps Ramon had been a diversion after all. While he had been talking, the night attackers had completely surrounded the house. Matt heard the sound of wood splintering upstairs and knew that some of them must have climbed up to the balcony and broken in that way. Jamie stepped forward and grabbed the diary, which he threw to Scott in a single movement. Scott caught it without even looking and slipped it into his jacket. Neither of them had spoken and Matt knew that the two of them must have communicated telepathically. He had seen them do it often enough. Each one of them knew instantly what the other was going to do. They were almost like reflections of each other.

Richard was reloading. Joanna Chambers fired again. She pulled some more bullets out of her dressing gown pocket but even as she fumbled with the loading mechanism, one of the creatures launched itself at her, grabbing hold of her with one hand, lifting an ancient-looking knife with the other. The blade was black with a broken, serrated edge. It stabbed down.

Matt stopped him.

Six months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. But then he had been alone. Now four of the Gatekeepers had come together and Scott, Jamie and Pedro had added their power to his. All he had to do was think about it and the blade snapped in half. The creature screamed in pain and a wisp of smoke rose from the palm of its hand as the hilt of the knife burned into it. By now, Chambers had loaded her rifle. She fired a single shot at point blank range, putting it out of its misery.

“We can’t control them!” Jamie shouted.

If these creatures had been fully human, he might have been able to make them turn round and leave the house. He and Scott didn’t just read minds. They were also able to control them. All their lives, the two brothers had recognized that they were living under a curse. Always, they had to be careful what they said. One unguarded thought, one word spoken in anger, could turn them into murderers. Once, Scott had almost killed a boy at school. And later, when their foster father committed suicide, Scott had known that he was secretly to blame.

But this time it wasn’t going to work. Their attackers didn’t seem to have minds that could be controlled. It was as if they had already been programmed to kill with no thoughts of their own. And there were too many of them. Matt glanced into the garden. It was still very dark outside but he could make out a whole crowd of them, moving relentlessly across the lawn. There were more at the back of the house and yet more of them upstairs.

Matt heard a horrible gargling sound and turned just as a man – or the remains of one – stumbled over the sofa and launched himself at him. The man was naked to the waist, sweat and slime dripping off his chest. Matt nodded and the man was flung backwards, crashing into the wall. He slid to the floor and lay still.

“They’re on the stairs.”

It was Scott who had seen them. The creatures from the balcony were making their way down, their movements slow, almost robotic. Jamie ran forward with the baseball bat and swung it into the face of the first man that he reached. There was a crunch of breaking bone. The man crumpled.

Matt looked all around him, wondering where the next attack was going to come from. At the same time, he smelled something. His eyes had begun to water and he was aware that it was getting more difficult to breathe. The temperature had risen too. Richard fired again, hitting one creature, then used the revolver as a club, smashing it into a second. “The house is on fire!” he yelled.

Matt didn’t need to be told. Smoke was pouring down the staircase, sucked into the ground floor by the turning fans. He could already hear the crackle of burning wood. Stretched out in the hot Nazca sun – it almost never rained in this part of Peru – the professor’s house would be bone dry. There were fire extinguishers in all the rooms, but they weren’t going to be given a chance to use them. Left to itself, the fire would consume the whole building in minutes.

Richard fired two more shots but then the gun clicked uselessly in his hand. He rummaged in his pocket, searching for more ammunition. Professor Chambers blasted off another round, but she too had only a few bullets left. And the creatures kept on coming. Kill one and another two or three would take its place. There seemed to be no end to them. Matt saw another one appear on the stairs, holding an iron post similar to the one that had killed Ramon. It had been torn free from the garden fence. He watched as the creature lifted it up to its shoulder, realized too late what it was about to do.

The creature flung the rod like a spear, aiming straight at Pedro. Matt shouted a warning. Pedro twisted round. The missile turned once in the air and then struck him a glancing blow on the side of the head. He cried out and fell to the floor, dazed and bleeding. Another creature – dressed bizarrely in the rags of a dinner suit – closed in on him. Matt couldn’t reach him. He was too far away. But Scott was there. He still had the kitchen knife. He was standing between Pedro and his attacker. Matt waited for him to move.