Charles Stross: The Atrocity Archives

She jumps when the door closes automatically with a faint hiss, and I remember to swallow-it only looks like a cheap fire door from the outside. "Okay, here's the fun part." I give the inner door a quick scan with a utility on my palmtop and it comes up blank, so I put my hand on the grab-bar and pull. This is the moment of truth; if the shit has truly hit the fan already the entire building will be locked down tighter than a nuclear bunker, and the thaumaturgic equivalent of a three-phase six-hundred-volt bearer will be running through all the barred portals. But I get to keep on breathing, and the door swings open on a dark corridor leading past shut storeroom doors to a dingy wooden staircase. And that's all it is-there's nothing in here to confuse an accidental burglar who makes it in past the wards in hope of finding some office supplies to filch. All the really classified stuff is either ten storeys underground or on the other side of the cellar walls. Twitching in the darkness.

"I don't see any zombies," Josephine says edgily, crowding up behind me in the gloom.

"That's because they're-" I freeze and bring up the dry powder extinguisher. "Have you got a pocket mirror?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

"Hold on." I hear a dry click, and then she passes me something like a toothbrush fucking a contact lens. "Will this do?"

"Oh wow, I didn't know you were a dentist." It's on a goddamn telescoping wand almost half a metre long. I lean forward and gingerly stretch the angled mirror so I can view the stairwell.

"It's for checking the undersides of cars for bombs-or cut brake pipes. You never know what the little fuckers in the school playground will do while you're talking to the headmistress."

Gulp. "Well, I guess this is a suitable alternative use."

I don't see any cameras up there so I retract the mirror and I'm about to set foot on the stairs when she says, "You missed one."

"Huh…?"

She points. It's about waist level, the size of a doorknob, embedded in the dark wooden wainscoting, and it's pointing up the stairs. "Shit, you're right." And there's something odd about it. I slide the mirror closer for an oblique look and dry-swallow. "There are two lenses. Oh, tricky."

I pull out my multitool and begin digging them out of the wall. It's coax cable, just like the doctor ordered. There's no obvious evidence of live SCORPION STARE, but my hands are still clammy and my heart is in my mouth as I realise how close I came to walking in front of it. How small can they make CCTV cameras, anyway? I keep seeing smaller and smaller ones…

"Better move fast," she comments.

"Why?"

"Because you've just told them you're coming."

"Oh. Okay." We climb the staircase in bursts, stopping before the next landing to check for more basilisk bugs. Josephine spots one, and so do I. I tag them with the mostly empty can of paint, then she blasts their lenses from behind and underneath, trying not to breathe the fumes in before we move past them. There's an unnaturally creaky floorboard, too, just for yucks. But we make it to the ground floor landing alive, and I just have time to realise how badly we've fucked up when the lights come up and the night watchmen come out from either side.

"Ah, Bob! Decided to visit the office for once, have we?"

It's Harriet, looking slightly demented in a black pinstriped suit and clutching a glass of what looks like fizzy white wine.

"Where the fuck is everyone else?" I demand, looking round. At this time of day the place should be heaving with office bodies. But all I see here is Harriet-and three or four silently leaning night watchmen in their grey ministry suits and hangdog expressions, luminous worms of light glowing in their eyes.

"I do believe we called the monthly fire drill a few hours ahead of schedule." Harriet smirks. "Then we locked the doors. It's quite simple, you know."

Fred from Accounting lurches sideways and peers at me over her shoulder. He's been dead for months: normally I'd say this was something of an improvement, but right now he's drooling slightly as if it's past his teatime.

"Who's that ?" asks Josephine.

"Who? Oh, one of them's a shambling undead bureaucrat and the other one used to work in accounts before he had a little accident with a summoning." I bare my teeth at Harriet. "The game's up."

"I don't think so." She's just standing there, looking supercilious and slightly triumphant behind her bodyguard of zombies. "Actually the boot is on the other foot. You're late and you're out of a job, Robert. The Counter-Possession Unit is being liquidated-that old fossil Angleton isn't needed anymore, once we get the benefits of panopticon surveillance combined with look-to-kill technology and rolled out on a departmental basis. In fact, you're just in time to clear your desk." She grins, horribly. "Stupid little boy, I'm sure they can find a use for you below stairs."

"You've been talking to our friend Mr. McLuhan, haven't you?" I ask desperately, trying to keep her talking-I really don't want the night watchmen to carry me away. "Is he upstairs?"

"If so, you probably need to know that I intend to arrest him. Twelve counts of murder and attempted murder, in case you were wondering." I almost look round, but manage to resist the urge: Josephine's voice is brittle but controlled. "Police."

"Wrong jurisdiction, dear," Harriet says consolingly. "And I do believe our idiot tearaway here has got you on the wrong message. That will never do." She snaps her fingers. "Take the woman, detain the man."

"Stop-" I begin. The zombies step forward, lurching jerkily, and then all hell breaks loose about twenty centimetres from my right ear. Zombies make excellent night watchmen and it takes a lot to knock one down, but they're not bulletproof, and Josephine unloads her magazine two rounds at a time. I'm dazzled by the flash and my head feels as if someone is whacking me on the ear with a shovel-bits of meat and unspeakable ripped stuff go flying, but precious little blood, and they keep coming.

"When you've quite finished," Harriet hisses, and snaps her fingers at Josephine: the zombies pause for a moment then close in, as their mistress backs toward the staircase up to the first floor.

"Quick, down the back corridor there!" I gasp, pointing to my left.

"The-what?"

"Quick!"

I dash along the corridor, tugging Josephine's arm until I feel her running with me. I pull my warrant card and yell, "Open sesame!" ahead and doors slam open to either side-including the broom closets and ductwork access points. "In here!" I dive in to one side and Josephine piles in after me and I yank at the door- "Close, damn you, fuck, close sesame!" and it slams shut with the hardscrabble of bony fingertips on the outside.

"Got a light?" I ask.

"Nah, I don't smoke. But I've got a torch somewhere-"

The scrabbling's getting louder. "I don't want to hurry you or anything, but-" And lo, there is light.

We're standing at the bottom of a shallow shaft with cable runs vanishing above us into the gloom. Josephine looks frantic. "They didn't drop! I shot them and they didn't drop!"

"Don't sweat it, they're run by remote control." Maybe now is not the time to explain about six-node summoning points, the Vohlman exercise, and the minutiae of raising and binding the dead: they're knocking on the door and they want in. But look, here's something even more interesting. "Hey, I see CAT-5 cabling. Pass me your torch?"

"This isn't the time to go all geeky on me, nerd-boy. Or are you looking for roaches?"

"Just fucking do it, I'll explain later, okay?" Harriet is really getting to me; it's been a long day and I told myself ages ago that if I ever heard another fucking lecture about timekeeping from her I'd go postal.