The Night Clock Page 21

  He stood up and backed away, taking Les’s arm. They retreated to the road where the others stood around, eyes wide and expressions set with grim purpose.

  And then they were running again, scattering across the road and advancing on the sinkhole as a wave of spiders poured over its lip. They looked to Trevena like harvestmen, globular bodies on articulated stalks, each carrying a smeary torch of that repellent light in their vitreous cores. They were the size of ostrich eggs and they strutted across the ground to meet the men on their fast, rattling legs, incautious of the blows that met them, rupturing their bodies and splintering their legs in sheaves.

  Again, they were repelled, many toppling back from the edge of the pit and spiralling like denuded umbrellas through the light and back into darkness.

  Les stood alongside Trevena and Daniel and watched as the spiders were demolished. The men fought well and with sustained ferocity. Babur was in the midst of it, swinging a heavy towing chain, its links threaded with carriage bolts.

  Trevena turned in time to see a cluster of spiders dart across the road and make for the campervan. He started to run towards them but he stopped when he saw Bronze John emerge from the side of the van and meet them head-on.

  Maybe the spiders had little wits but the sight of the tiger affected them nonetheless. Almost comically, their legs slid on the concrete and pedalled backwards in an attempt to decelerate, but it was too late for them. Bronze John let them come and then he lashed out a paw and sent them all to smithereens. He licked his paw, turned and skulked back into the van.

  Trevena turned back, sweating and breathless, the tyre-iron still clenched in his fist. The men had managed to destroy or throw down the horde and were now gathered again at the edge of the pit. The engine noises were louder now and with it came a wind, pushed up through the sinkhole, smelling of burnt oil, sulphur and something else more organic. Trevena put a hand over his nose. It smelled, he thought, like the dirt in the mouth of a month-old corpse.

  Les turned and began pushing his men away. They backed off, faces pale and tired, eyes wide with apprehension.

  Daniel came over to Trevena. Trevena wondered how the flesh of a face could bear to carry such anguish without falling slack against its bones in submission, declining for good to express any further form of raw emotion.

  “What is it?” Trevena asked.

  Daniel took a breath, a great hitching lungful of air.

  “The Autoscopes are coming,” he said.

  THEY ROSE UP through the pit on heavy machines with armour and mighty weapons bolted to their rides. Their engines thundered and the sides of the sinkhole crumbled and dropped into the shaft until the entire remains of the building were gone. It ate up the ground and the arc lights fell and took with them the cables and the generator so that they all now stood in nothing but the red darkness.

  Les waved the men away.

  “Go home,” he shouted. “Be with your families. You fought well. Don’t be ashamed.”

  The men looked around, looked to each other in the hope of better options, but the air now stank and the sound of those machines was like the roar of a hellish turbine. They hung their heads. Some embraced, others shook hands. Someone grabbed Trevena’s hand and pumped it, tears standing in his eyes.

  They dispersed. Some went across the road and traipsed into the pub. Trevena, Daniel and Les stood at the kerb and waited.

  Daniel said, “Where’s Babur?”

  THEY DIDN’T HEAR the campervan engine start over the noise coming up from the pit, but when they were lit up by its headlights, they turned to see it bumping across the road. It stopped, idling for a moment, and they could see, in the red backwash from the brake lights, Bronze John and Anna standing in the shadows of the car park. Bronze John’s head was down and Anna was holding onto him, whispering into his ear. She was crying.

  Trevena stepped forward, intending to get up into the van, but before he could reach the door, Babur stood on the accelerator and the van lunged towards the pit. Trevena could see his face, strained but serene. Their eyes met for a moment, and Babur smiled.

  And then he drove the van over the lip of the pit.

  THE THREE MEN stood and waited. No one spoke.

  The rim of the sinkhole darkened again as the lights from the van fell away.

  The turbine noise rose in pitch. The men could hear rotors chopping the vile air. Trevena held his breath.

  Then: a deafening, punching thump, and the ground shook beneath them. Cracks jagged out from the edge of the pit, buckling the road. The turbines and the rotors fell silent.

  The machines had stopped.

  Trevena strained his ears, and then the screaming started.

  A scream of rage and a scream of metal. Trevena held his head, his knees weakening. He clenched his teeth. He imagined the drop through darkness, Babur seeing those frightful heads turned up towards him, great angel-eyes burning in the plummeting headlights, claws and frills of spines glittering, the black metal of their machines gleaming, before he activated the EMP for a final time. A full charge, loaded, discharging at the last minute, knocking out those ascending engines.

  There was a moment when the whole world was filled with the chaos of their plunge. It sounded like an avalanche calving out the side of an iron mountain. There were more earth-shaking explosions and the rim of the pit flickered orange from the flames.

  The three men were on their knees. Trevena thought he might be screaming. He looked up and saw, through vision blurred by tears and the shaking of the earth, that the planet was setting. Mars was going down behind the hills, taking its bloody traces with it.

  Trevena lay on the road and closed his eyes. He felt the sharpness of grit against the backs of his hands. Silence returned to the village. He heard voices. Daniel and Les talking. Others. People venturing from the pub, conferring in tones of wonder, caution, speculation. Somewhere, a dog barking.

  Someone was standing over him. He opened his eyes and saw it was Daniel. He let the man help him to his feet. They looked around. There was no sound from the pit. Trevena brushed dirt from his clothes and examined himself. He had a shallow graze on his cheek from a fragment of flying glass. Daniel appeared unharmed and a look of composure had returned to his face.

  “Are you okay, Phil?”

  “Yes,” Trevena said and felt surprised saying it. “I’m fine.”

  “That was a remarkable sacrifice,” Daniel said.

  Trevena nodded. “We need to take this thing out. What now?”

  “We still need to find Chloe. Babur told me where he’d found her. He said she’d be safe for now. I want to get to her. We need transport.”

  Bronze John and Anna joined them at the side of the road. Anna was pale.

  “How you doing, love?” Trevena asked.

  Anna shrugged. “’Kay.” She said. The tiger stood close, watching her.

  “Nice job with the spiders,” Trevena said to him.

  Bronze John lifted a lip revealing a sardonic picket of teeth.

  And then Bronze John’s ears pricked up and he swung his head to look down the road. He padded off, his tail switching in anticipation.

  The dog barked again, closer now.

  “I know that bark,” Daniel said, and his face lit up.

  The dog emerged from the darkness at the end of the street. He bounded up to them, tail thrashing. He was greeted first by the tiger, letting the dog jump up at his face and lick him, and then he approached the others.

  “Hello, Bix,” Daniel said and knelt down to fuss him. Anna was intrigued and Bix enjoyed her attentions, too.

  “What do you know, fella?” Daniel said.

  “I know Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan,” he said. “Chloe’s mother is quite an educated young woman. She doesn’t speak Afghan, but she has a working geographical knowledge of the region. I also know it’s too late to get to Chloe in her Quay.”

  Daniel’s face registered shock, but Bix said, “She’s safe. I just left her. Bu
t she’s being born, and where her mother is, they’re in danger. We have to get to Quay-Endula.”

  “Have we got time?” Trevena said.

  Daniel turned and looked at him.

  “Time’s what we do here,” he said.

  LES COMMANDEERED A truck from one of the men in the village, a high-sided flatbed of indeterminate make and model. It was old, diesel, and rumbled up the road on its big, worn tyres. A column of off-white smoke rose from its exhaust.

  “She’ll do,” Daniel said. “You drive, Phil.”

  Trevena pulled the door open and looked into the cab. He wrinkled his nose at the sour smell that wafted into his face. He seated himself behind the no-frills dashboard and wound the window down. It dropped an inch and stuck. He put his foot on the clutch and rattled the gear stick around until he thought he’d found first, and stalled it.

  “Bollocks.”

  Daniel lifted Anna in through the passenger side and climbed in. He patted his lap and Bix jumped up and settled himself between them. “Roll your window down, Dan,” he said. He looked excited. Daniel did so, getting his window to lower all the way. Trevena raised his eyebrows.

  “I like the wind in my ears,” Bix said to him.

  “So do I,” Trevena said.

  There was a sudden jolt and the front of the truck lifted a foot off the ground for a moment. Trevena glanced in the rear-view mirror.

  “There’s a tiger in the back,” he said. “So you know.”

  Daniel smiled. “Let’s go,” he said, and pointed up the road. Trevena reached for the ignition and turned the key. The truck roared and Trevena lifted his foot off the accelerator before he flooded it. He found first and, holding his breath, pulled them away. Les watched from outside the pub. He raised a hand and blew Anna a kiss. She waved back and then sat with an arm around Bix while Trevena trundled the truck up the road, crunching into second.

  “Can you go a bit faster?” Bix said. His tongue was hanging out and there was a daft look in his eyes. Talking bloody dog, he was still a bloody dog, thought Trevena, and waited until the speedometer read thirty before he boldly negotiated third. The gear stick felt like it might snap off in his fist. Bix leaned across Daniel’s lap and stuck his nose out of the window.

  “You know the drill,” Daniel said as Trevena careered the truck up a lane so narrow the bushes either side whacked against the wing mirrors.

  “You’re kidding,” Trevena said.

  “Nope. Shut your eyes.”

  Trevena swallowed, knuckles white on the steering wheel, and shut his eyes.

  ONCE MORE, THAT sense of drift, and ribbons of light across his eyelids. Trevena could feel the curve of the wheel clenched in his hands, cool and tacky with grime. He was moaning again. He didn’t care. This time he was driving.

  He jolted forward in his seat as the truck came back into contact with the road. His eyes flew open and he wrestled with the wheel, steering the truck up onto a verge at the side of a railway line. The truck stalled. Trevena didn’t swear this time, just sat slumped in his seat breathing deeply.

  They got down from the cab and stood looking out onto a moonlit cove. Beyond the cliffs to their right could be seen the lights of a city sprawling around the perimeter of a much larger, sweeping bay.

  “Is that a pier?” Trevena said, but the others were already halfway down towards the beach and nobody heard him.

  Trevena shrugged and followed them onto the sand.

  There was a fire burning on the beach, and the movement of people around it. As they covered the distance between them, a figure moved off towards the shore. Trevena looked in the direction of the horizon and felt a familiar dread settle over his spirits.

  Something was coming over the water. He could recognise the sound now and felt the backs of his eyes prickle as their light evolved from the darkness.

  Daniel was running towards the people around the fire. He shouted. Bronze John and Bix covered the distance quickly, with Anna scampering behind. Trevena decided he’d better get over there and began to run, too.

  Three men met them at the fire. A giant with blond hair, a much smaller man, slight and edgy with curly black hair and glasses, and a young chap with long hair tied back in a pony tail. Trevena could see they were standing guard around a woman. She was in labour and clearly struggling. She cried out and the young man went to her side, smoothing the sweat damp hair on her brow and over her ears. He kissed her and held her hand. The curly haired man knelt also, tending them both.

  Daniel and the tall man embraced. When they separated, Trevena could see the tall man was weeping. “Incredible bravery,” he said, and Trevena realised he was talking about Babur. He stepped forward and held out his hand.

  “Phil Trevena,” he said.

  “Jon Index. Good to meet you, my friend. Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  Index cupped Anna’s cheek in his huge hand. She smiled up at him. “And hello, my sweet,” he said. “It’s good to finally meet you. Your sister will be relieved to see you, I think. And your father, thanks to this man”

  Trevena watched Anna turn and run off up the beach with Bix and Bronze John in tow and he wondered if this was what salvation felt like.

  “Come with me,” Index said.

  They walked down to the shoreline. As they approached, Trevena could see that what he’d thought was just a single large figure standing silhouetted in the moonlight was, in fact, two people. A young boy was standing in the shadow of the man and he was reaching up to grip the sides of the man’s head in his hands.

  Index took Trevena’s arm while they were still a way off and stopped. Daniel continued down to the shore

  “That’s Alex and his Uncle Sandy,” Index said. “Sandy is the Glassblower and Alex is his facilitator. You know what those things are out there? Uproar Contraptions driven by Toyceivers and their vitreophim creations. We can’t fight them all and hope to save Claire and the baby. Sandy and Alex will lay down cover for us and then we must get Claire away from here.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Trevena asked. Index’s eyes were very cold and very blue in the moonlight. If he’d asked Trevena to wade into the sea and fight the oncoming horde on his own while the others escaped, he would have agreed without hesitation.

  But Index said, “Can you drive that truck down here?”

  Trevena had a moment to appreciate the mundanity of the request and smiled. He was amongst gods here after all. The least he could be was their designated driver.

  “I should think so, if I get a good run-up down the slope. But I don’t think she’ll be going anywhere once she gets into this wet sand.”

  “Just get her down here, Phil. If you can.”

  Trevena headed back up the beach to the truck at the top of the slope. He climbed into the cab and started the engine. He switched the headlights on and swung the truck in a half circle away from the verge so that the beams shone down onto the beach. He gunned the engine and took his foot off the clutch. The front wheels of the truck left the road and dropped onto the packed sand at the top of the dune.

  “Here we go,” Trevena said. He wished the truck had a radio. He would have liked to do this to a bit of rock. Maybe Whitesnake. The only soundtrack he had was the whine and clatter of the approaching Uproar Contraptions, rising on the wind blowing in through the passenger side window.

  “Trouble always comin’ my waaaay,” Trevena sang, dropping an octave to his best Coverdale blues moan, and popped the clutch.

  THE NIGHT CLOCK is calling its numbers to its face and a man whose name is metal knelt and held the body of his friend in his arms. The Gantry had closed with Cade inside. He had ambushed them, running from an alleyway, his broken sword swinging in furious arcs as the Gantry was closing.

  The man, whose name was Bismuth, and his friend, Plummer, both large men, formidable, had elected to remain behind to confront the Autoscopes that had come to London through their own colossal ingress Gantries.

  Plummer had stepped f
orward to cut Cade off from the children and the pregnant girl, and Cade had thrust his shattered sword through Plummer’s side.

  Bismuth moved as fast as he could, feeling the restrictions of his size, and the long, heavy coat he wore, and the weight of his damned boots, but could only reach Plummer as he fell, and that was too late, because Cade had thrown himself through the Gantry and it had closed behind him.

  Bismuth caught the falling man and held him and lowered him to the ground.

  Blood bubbled from Plummer’s mouth. He was trying to speak. Bismuth put his head an inch away from the scarred and weathered face of his Paladin.

  “Tell me…” Plummer whispered. “Tell me…” His eyes rolled and his head moved, agitated, in the crook of Bismuth’s arm. Blood was pouring from the wound in his side, pooling in the gutter.

  Bismuth looked up at the London skyline.

  The Gantries were gone and with them the Autoscopes that had poured from them.

  “They’re gone,” Bismuth said. “Maybe they were never there.”

  “Cade… fucked them…” Plummer’s chest heaved and he sprayed a fan of blood from his mouth as he laughed. He reached up and patted Bismuth’s bearded cheek. Bismuth looked down at his friend and smiled. Something had happened beyond the Gantry Index had opened to take the children and the woman to safety. Cade’s presence there had either thrown Dark Time out or someone had done something in the Quays to prevent the incursions.

  Bismuth closed his eyes and waited.

  He heard nothing, no message from the Quays, saw no visions, but he smelt something.

  “I can smell an ocean,” he said, but he spoke it to himself.

  Plummer had died.

  BISMUTH PLACED THE body of his friend in the back of Cade’s car. It was a convertible Saab, lowered to look louche and powerful. The keys were still in it. Bismuth switched on the ignition and operated the roof, letting it unfold and ride up over the interior. He took hold of Plummer’s right hand and kissed it. He closed his eyes and gave thanks for this man and his years of devotion.