Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Matt collapsed to the ground, unable to move. The policemen weren’t taking any chances. They had deliberately neutralized him before he could use his power against them.

A moment later, two of them fell on him. They twisted his arms behind his back and he felt cold steel against his wrists as a pair of handcuffs were locked into place. One of the policemen grabbed him by the hair and twisted him round so that he was in a kneeling position.

Another man appeared at the door.

“So this is Matthew Freeman,” he said.

The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation had wanted to make sure that everything was safe before he came in. Now he strutted forward and stood over Matt, looking down at him with a smile on his face. Although he had been hastily summoned out of bed, he was as smartly dressed as always, in a new suit and polished shoes. “What a great pleasure to meet you,” he added.

Matt ignored him. He twisted round so that he was facing Paul Adams. His eyes were filled with anger. “What have you done?” he yelled.

“I called them while you were in the shower.” Adams went over to the chairman. It was clear he was afraid of him. He stood there, wringing his hands together as if trying to wash them clean. “This is the boy, Mr Chairman,” he muttered. “He came to the flat in the middle of the night. I called you the moment I could.”

“You’ve done very well,” the chairman muttered. He was still gazing at Matt. “I never thought it would be this easy,” he said.

Matt swore at him.

“I knew you were looking for him, Mr Chairman,” Paul Adams went on. “And now you have him. So you don’t need Scarly. Tell me you’ll let Scarly go.”

The chairman turned his head slowly and examined Scarlett’s father as if he were a doctor about to break bad news. “I will not let Scarly go,” he said. “I will never let Scarly go.”

“Then at least let me see her. I’ve given you the boy. Don’t I deserve a reward?”

“You most certainly do,” the chairman said.

He nodded at one of the policemen, who shot Paul Adams in the head. Matt saw the spray of blood as the back of his skull was blown off. He was dead instantly. His knees buckled underneath him and he fell to one side.

“A quick death,” the chairman remarked. He nodded at Matt. “Soon you’ll be wishing you could have had one too.”

He turned and walked out of the room. Two of the policemen reached forward and jerked Matt to his feet. Then they dragged him out, along the corridor and down to the city below.

The dragon was moving towards Hong Kong, closing in with deadly precision, gaining strength as it crossed the water. Scarlett had summoned it and it had heard. Even she couldn’t turn it back now.

It had begun its life as nothing more than a front of warm air, rising into the sky. But then, very quickly, a swirl of cloud had formed, spinning faster and faster with a dark, unblinking eye at the centre. By the time the weather satellites had transmitted the first pictures from the Strait of Luzon, it was already too late. The dragon was awake. Its appetite was as big as the ocean where it had been born and it would destroy anything that stood in its path.

The dragon was a typhoon.

Tai fung.

The words mean “big wind”, but they went nowhere near describing the most powerful force of nature; a storm that contained a hundred storms within it. The typhoon would travel at over two hundred miles an hour. Its eye might be thirty miles wide. The hurricane winds around it would generate as much energy in one second as ten nuclear bombs. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as “the dragon’s breath”, as if they come from some terrible monster living deep in the sea.

Since 1884, the Hong Kong Observatory had put out a series of warnings whenever a typhoon had come within five hundred miles and each warning has come with a beacon, or a signal, attached. Signal One was shaped like a letter T and warned the local populace to stand by. Signal Three, an upside down T, was more serious. Now people were told to stay at home, not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Later on came Signal Eight, a triangle, Signal Nine, an hourglass, and finally, most terrifyingly, Signal Ten. Perhaps appropriately, this took the shape of a cross. Signal Ten meant devastation. It would almost certainly bring wholesale loss of life.

And that was what was on its way now.

But there were no warnings. Nobody had been prepared for a typhoon in November, which was months after the storm season should have ended. And anyway, no typhoon could possibly have formed so quickly. It would normally take at least a week. This one had reached its full power in less than a day. The whole thing was impossible.

Nor was there anyone left to send out the signals. Hong Kong Observatory had been abandoned. Many of the scientists had left. The others were too scared to come to work as the city continued its descent into sickness and death.

Unseen, the dragon rushed towards them. The skyscrapers were already in its sight. Suddenly they seemed tiny and insubstantial as, with a great roar, it fell on them. By the time anyone realized what was happening it was already far too late.

The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was wondering how many people had died in the last twenty-four hours and how many more would die in the next. He could imagine them, sixty-six floors below, crawling over the pavements, begging for help that would never come, finally losing consciousness in a cloud of misery and pain. He himself would leave Hong Kong very soon. His work here was almost finished. It was time to claim his reward.

The Old Ones were going to give him the whole of Asia to rule over in recognition of what he had achieved. Even Ghengis Khan hadn’t been as powerful as that. He would live in a palace, an old-fashioned one with deep, marble baths and banqueting rooms and gardens a mile long. The world leaders who survived would bow in front of him and anyone who had ever offended him, in business or in private life, would die in ingenious ways that he had already designed. He would open a theatre of blood and they would star in it. And anything he wanted he would have. The thought of it made his head spin.

He was behind his desk in his office on the executive floor of The Nail and he was not alone. There was a man sitting on the same leather sofa that Scarlett Adams had occupied just a week before. The man had travelled a very long way and he was still looking crumpled from his flight. He was elderly, dressed in a shabby, brown suit that didn’t quite fit him. It was the right size but it hung awkwardly. The man was bald with two small tufts of white hair around his ears and white eyebrows. He looked ill at ease in this smart office. He was out of place and he knew it. But he was glad to be here. It had been a journey he was determined to make.

His name was Gregor Malenkov. For many years he had been known as Father Gregory, but he planned to put that behind him now. He had left the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy for good. He, too, had come for his reward.

“So how do you like Hong Kong?” the chairman asked.

“It’s an extraordinary city,” Father Gregory rasped. “Quite extraordinary. I came here as a young man but it was much smaller then. Half the buildings weren’t here and the airport was in a different place. All these lights! All the traffic and the noise! I have to say, I hardly recognized it.”

“A week from now, it will be completely unrecognizable,” the chairman said. “It will have become a necropolis. I’m sure you will understand what that means, a man of your learning.”

“A city of the dead.”

“Exactly. The entire population has begun to die. In just a matter of days, there will be no one left. The corpses are already piling up in the street. The hospitals are full – not that they would be any use as the doctors and the nurses are dying too. Nobody even bothers to call the cemeteries. There’s no room there. And soon things will get much, much worse. It will be interesting to watch.”