Adam Baker - Terminus

‘Thought you were a noobie.’

‘New to Rescue. I’ve been riding a truck eight years.’

Donahue hefted an axe. She contemplated the chipped blade, relished the heavy wooden shaft.

‘Personally, I like to be first through the door. Look the devil in the eye. Fire is a beautiful thing. Liquid gold.’

They climbed steps to the street entrance. They hauled the Coke machine aside. Hands pawed the opaque curtain draped across the gate.

They pulled on respirators.

Donahue gave the nod.

Lupe flipped open a knife and slit plastic ties. Crackle of polythene as she tugged the heavy sheet aside.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Donahue took an instinctive step back. Emaciated arms thrust between the bars. Talons grasped and clawed inches from her mask.

Cadaverous creatures. Hotel service staff. Maids, pot washers, laundrymen. Tumours knotted through burn-blackened flesh. They jammed their faces against the rusted iron lattice. They hissed. They spat.

‘How many do you reckon?’ asked Lupe.

‘Five or six.’

‘If they hammer the gate long enough, they’ll bring it down.’

‘Let’s start with this guy.’

Donahue braced her legs and hefted the axe. She took aim at one of the arms thrust through the bars. A chef. Dark spatter on his sleeve. Either blood or bolognese.

Donahue brought down the axe. The first blow cut deep and splintered bone. The second blow sheered the limb at the elbow. Blood-spurt. A severed forearm fell at her feet. Fingers grasped and clenched.

She crouched and picked up the limb.

‘Watch yourself.’

She slotted the hand through the grate and threw it into the street.

The chef continued to butt against the gate. The stump of his arm raked the bars.

Lupe thrust the pike through the iron lattice. She speared the chef’s eye socket. He toppled backwards into the street, feet dancing as he lay in the rain.

More emaciated prowlers crowded the gate, hungry for fresh meat.

Donahue hacked grasping hands.

Lupe held the pike shoulder-high like a javelin. Each thrust burst eyeballs and dug deep into brain.

A skeletal thing with no legs. Body armour and a Kevlar helmet. Some kind of cash truck guard. It crawled on its belly, thrust an arm through the grate and snatched at Lupe’s legs with a gloved hand. Lupe stabbed downwards with the steel pike and speared the creature in the back of the neck. It squealed and frothed as she pressed down with her body weight, twisted the tip of the pike deep into its cortex.

A fat guy in chalk-stripe suit slammed against the gate. He drooled. He snarled. Donahue reached through the lattice and gripped blood-matted hair. She pulled his pudgy face up against the bars. She drove a knife into his eye socket and rotated the blade.

‘Nice suit,’ said Lupe, gesturing to the body slumped in front of the gate. ‘Look at the lapels. Fine tailoring.’

‘Yeah?’

‘And check out his wrist. Guy is wearing a Breitling.’

‘Financial district,’ said Donahue. ‘Wall Street.’

‘You’d think they would be long gone. Hamptons. Connecticut. Wherever the hell rich bastards spend the weekend. Push their antique furniture up against the door and stand guard with a polo mallet.’

‘This place used to be central to their lives, I guess. So they came back. An instinct. A faint memory. They feel compelled to return, to mill around the sushi bars and coffee shops, but they don’t know why.’

‘We’re only a couple of blocks from The Federal Reserve,’ said Lupe. ‘Picture it. Fifty tons of bullion. Stacks of it. All those bars sitting in an unguarded vault. Want to fill your pockets?’

‘Hard to think of anything more pointless.’

‘We’ve got a thermal lance. We could cut through the vault door in a couple of hours.’

‘Come on. That’s a street-trash mindset. Look beyond it.’

‘Friend of mine got his throat cut over a pair of K-Swiss.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’d like one of those gold bars. I’d like to hold it in my hand just to say I made it, just to say I won.’

They looked down at the misshapen bodies.

‘Stinking fucks,’ said Lupe.

They re-hung the polythene curtain and shunted the Coke machine back in position.

They pulled off their respirators.

Donahue wiped sweat from her face.

‘There will be more,’ she said.

‘And we’ll kill them too.’

They headed down the stairs.

‘Can you hear that?’ asked Lupe.

‘What?’

‘Sounds like music.’

‘There’s something in the walls,’ said Wade.

‘Where?’ asked Lupe.

‘Over there somewhere. To my left.’

‘Must have been the gramophone.’

Wade shook his head.

‘I killed the music.’

The turntable still spun with a rhythmic metallic rasp. Donahue found the brake lever and brought it to a standstill. She closed the lid.

They stood in silence.

‘See? Nothing.’

‘It wasn’t the record player,’ said Wade. ‘There was a scratching sound, like dragging nails. I definitely heard it.’

‘Where exactly did it come from?’

‘Over there. The corner of the room. Or thereabouts.’

‘There’s nothing,’ said Donahue. ‘Seriously. It had to be the phonograph. The mechanism must be rusted to shit.’

‘No. It was the sound of a living thing. You know what I’m saying. Scratching. Clawing. It had purpose.’

Lupe looked high on the wall. She ran her hand across the whitewashed surface.

‘Couple of planks screwed to the wall. See that? Beneath the paint? Wooden slats. Something blocked off.’

‘Could be rats,’ said Donahue. ‘Got to be millions of them, skulking around.’

‘Sure as hell didn’t sound like rats.’

‘Don’t let your imagination run wild,’ said Donahue. ‘Chill. We’ve got axes, knives and a big-ass gun. Anything breaks in, it will rue the day.’

Galloway paced the ticket hall.

‘Anyone got a smoke? Come on. One of you bastards must have a cigarette.’

‘Sorry, brother,’ said Wade.

Lupe and Donahue ignored him.

‘Assholes. The lot of you.’

Galloway stood over Sicknote and watched him paint. He cocked his head, tried to make sense of the image.

Sicknote pricked his thumb with a sliver of glass. He squeezed a fresh bead of blood and smeared it on the tiles. Bold, broad strokes. Blood and dust mixed charcoal black. He painted a swirling vortex. Screaming faces sucked downwards into the singularity.

Galloway repositioned himself to get a better view.

‘What’s that? Sinners dragged to hell or some shit?’

‘The Great Absence. It’s calling us, drawing us in.’

‘Calling? You can hear an actual voice?’

‘I can hear the smothering silence. It’s reaching out to us, reaching through the tunnels. It’s almost here.’

‘Has it got a name?’

‘It can’t have a name. It’s like antimatter. The opposite of existence. A creeping, expanding null. It’s new to this planet. Nothing like it has ever walked the earth before. But it is here now, singing in the dark.’

‘Whatever, man.’

Galloway took a Sharpie from the breast pocket of his shirt. He dropped it on the tiles.

‘Stop cutting yourself, for God’s sake.’

Sicknote uncapped the pen and started to draw.

Galloway sat on the bench next to Wade.

Wade held out his hand.

‘Guess we got off on the wrong foot.’

‘Fuck you,’ said Galloway.

‘We’ll be down here a while, bro. No point throwing punches all damn night.’

Galloway reluctantly shook his hand.

‘Does he always do that? Your friend. Sicknote. Does he always daub mad shit over everything?’