Paul Cornell - London Falling

She was suddenly aware of the crowd all staring at her, of shouts and screams going up, in a roar louder than she had ever heard, even here, and on the screens there still were images that spoke of the children she had boiled, of her glorious sacrifices. It was as if this moment was made only of her. She thought absently of the coincidence in where that girl’s blows had fallen, without apparent intent on her part. Or had it merely been coincidence? That thought was worrying. Mora increased her speed, marching determinedly towards Faranchi. His team mates parted like sheep before her-

She was attacked from behind.

Her face hit the turf, she sprawled on the ground, the knife bounced away from her. She lay there, shocked, her face and fingers pressed in that beloved soil. She tried to take power from it. But she found there was. . nothing!

She had been severed from it. She had been betrayed.

Or. . sacrificed ?

She looked up as what turned out to be the steward who’d tackled her grabbed her once more, manhandling her, started hauling her up. She raked his face with her fingernails. He cried out and fell back, but then another two were on her, trying to restrain her. Both were wearing the club badge, and she hesitated at the sight of it.

She looked past them, saw the entire stadium. And she stopped her struggling in astonishment. From every direction, spectators were fighting their way onto the pitch, a great concert of them bursting over the barricades. The stewards couldn’t stop them, and then they came at her, too. They were roaring now, enough to drown out the tannoy. They were fast converging on her, hundreds of them, converging on the centre spot where she stood. She spun slowly in the circle, feeling the mob all looking at her and, for the first time, taking nothing from it. ‘Don’t you understand?!’ she screamed. ‘I did it all for you! I’m on your side!’

Being remembered had turned out to be a two-edged sword.

The mob rushed in. She threw the stewards down. She picked a direction. She started to hopelessly hobble away.

The fittest men reached her first. One struck her round the shoulders, and while she was scratching at him, another grappled her around the waist. She could hear screaming now, the screaming of women, coming in on the next wave, women howling for her blood. Something heavy struck her round the head. She spun away, towards the beloved floodlights and the blank dark sky-

She encountered a second attack, from the other way. Hands grabbed at her, from every direction. What hair she had left was wrenched out. They yelled in triumph that they’d got some of her hair. Feet lunged into the backs of her knees. Childish blows rained on her back, delivered by those who ran forward and then fearfully back again, just to say they’d got her. Long nails raked her face, and tried to get into her eyes and tug her ears.

She hadn’t expected the knife. She felt a final weakness flood into her, in a terrible instant, as its blade entered the existing wound in her side. A large hard man and his mates pierced the wound again, and then again, their blades through her ribs, catching on the organs inside her. They were shouting obscenities, rage on their faces, calling out things about kids — when their words were recognizable at all. For every one of them she wounded and flung away, the rest of them grew more shrill, more ecstatic. Their blood on her hands was everything they had seen in their dreams for weeks, and now, she realized, they had found a release for all that fear, all that hatred. She had made herself the thing they hated. And now they had her. And, just for once, just for once, she heard the actual words, hissed through clenched teeth: they were going to give it back, give someone what they deserved.

A large hand got the back of her head and twisted it and forced it down into the mud. She writhed, she spluttered, sucking mud down into her lungs. She felt something tighten around her throat. A belt. Thin leather. Too tight.

She saw now why this had to be like this. But she was not willing. But that didn’t matter. What a terrible thought. Three blows to the head, three wounds to the side, three suffocating attacks on her throat. The threefold death three times. She was to be a great sacrifice.

Still a victim! Still!

She wrenched herself up, and felt all her limbs held, and her body being hacked at. If there was rescue, it was far beyond this crowd that spun around her, around and around, and every one of them reaching in to add to her punishment. Fists punched at her face. Blood covered her vision. An eye exploded. Her ribcage burst open. She tried to twist away. Just an animal now. But every part of her was being pulled. Her intestines, she was dimly aware still, were being hauled out, beautiful silver-peppery in the gold and green light.

Hands plunged in. Hands got hold of her heart. And she had one last thought, which was that she knew where she was going. And who would be waiting for her there. And she thought she saw him — in the last moment she could still see — standing there apart from the crowd and smiling.

And then the mob ripped her fucking heart out.

The wave burst from the stadium. Ripples raced out from it in concentric circles. The ripples hit other waves and rebounded, set up interference patterns that bounced off the nearby buildings. They rushed invisibly, instantly, to the very boundaries of the crooked circle of the conjoined cities of Greater London. And then it reflected back to the centre again. And burst out again fivefold, in five directions, forming the great knot of something being pulled suddenly tight.

The smiling man exulted in it. He stood at all the places in London where he could stand, and watched as the wheel of his ambition turned a full circle on this dark winter day, towards what he had in store for London. And he found it good, my son.

He held the pieces of Mora Losley in his hands. Because in the moment of her death he had arranged for her good work to continue. For the image and the fear of her to imprint themselves on everyone.

He scattered the notions of what she was into the hidden rivers under London. She was swept underground, through the caves where the remains of older civilizations were built upon, each city standing on the shoulders of some older giant. She passed along the back of St Thomas’ hospital, and under Elephant and Castle, alongside New Kent Road, and then she was lost amid that plummet into the modernity of all the new sewers, and he felt the roar of despair in her-

— and then the sense of accomplishment as she emerged again, part of the pattern, to splash upon the mud of the old rookery of Jacob’s Island, where they used to hang the pirates, and there she became the last victim lost in that murk.

And so she was watermarked into the hearts of men.

Ghosts of her would appear this very night, and often, as the stories would spread, and people would look out for her and believe. At her houses, and at the West Ham ground, she had done great service in life, also in the moment of her death, and now she would continue to turn the wheel for him afterwards, in his own borough. ‘No rest for the wicked,’ he declared.

And then he washed his hands of her.

Quill was feeling totally useless as the paramedics got Ross into the back of the ambulance, gazing into her unconscious face as they got the collar on — the three of them looking down at her, helpless but horribly caring. He felt sick at what he was hearing from the radio, and from the police reports coming out of Upton Park. He kept holding the child who was a stranger to him, as the ambulance drove away, feeling that he was frightening her with how blank his face must be compared to whatever she was so desperately needing. He wanted to hand her on to someone else, but he couldn’t, and he felt guilty even at the thought. He saw how Sefton and Costain were standing about uselessly too. A copper thought saved him: they had done what they set out to do. Well, they had achieved Objectives one to three and seven, anyway. He felt ridiculously proud of his team, of what each of the other three had done to get them here. And proud of Ross, at the end: her sacrifice. For a moment, he thought that this must be what it was like to be a father.