Necropolis

ACROSS THE ROOF

Lohan was the first out into the corridor, then Draco and Scarlett with Red behind. They were all armed apart from her. The man outside the lift had unhooked his machine gun and was cradling it in his arms. He didn’t look scared. In fact, he was completely relaxed, as if this was all in a day’s work.

Scarlett was feeling sick with anger. This was her fault. The jade pendant that she had been given was bugged in every sense of the word – and it had told the chairman exactly where she was. Why had she even worn it? She should have left it beside the bed. But it was too late to think about it now. The Hong Kong police had arrived. They were already on their way up.

Her every instinct would have been to get out of there as quickly as they could but they were moving slowly, taking it one step at a time. Lohan was listening out for any sound, his head tilted sideways, his gun level with his shoulder. Scarlett saw him signal to the man at the lift, pointing with two fingers, ordering him to stay where he was, and she knew that it was probably a death sentence. These people had some sort of code among themselves. They did exactly what they were told no matter what it might cost.

For a brief moment, everything was silent. The police cars had turned off their sirens and the gunfire had stopped. The corridor was empty. But then, with a surge of alarm, Scarlett saw a blinking light. There were two arrows next to the lift doors, one pointing up, the other down. One of them was flashing. The lift was on its way up.

Lohan gestured with the gun. “You follow me. This way…”

They set off down the corridor but it seemed to Scarlett that he was leading them the wrong way. It would obviously have been crazy to have tried taking the lift, but wouldn’t the emergency stairs be somewhere near by? Lohan was taking them ever further into the building and away from what was surely the only way out.

But nobody argued. Scarlett still had no idea who Lohan was or what authority he had over the others. He had said that he belonged to an organization and one that had been looking out for her from the day she had been born, but he hadn’t told her what it was called, who ran it or anything like that. It seemed that he and his people were some sort of resistance, fighting against the Old Ones, the last survivors in a city that had been attacked from within. But they weren’t the police. They weren’t the army. What did that leave?

It was too late for any more questions now. Lohan was moving a little faster but still on tiptoe, making no noise, as if he expected one of the many doors to spring open and someone to jump out. How high up were they? How long did they have before the lift arrived? The end of the corridor was about thirty metres away with ten doors on either side. A row of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling on wires lit the way ahead. Scarlett heard a loud, metallic click and risked a glance back. The man with the machine gun had released the safety catch. Lohan muttered something under his breath.

There was the ping of a bell.

The lift had arrived.

Scarlett was still watching as the lift doors opened and yellow light flooded out. The man with the machine gun had positioned himself directly opposite with his shoulders planted against the wall. Without any warning, he opened fire, sending a firestorm of bullets into the lift. The noise in the confined space was shocking. She could actually feel it, hammering into her ears. But she couldn’t see what the man was shooting at. The entire corridor blazed white and red and she heard a high-pitched scream like nothing she had ever heard before, as whatever was inside the lift was pulverized.

Then something appeared, stretching out of the open doorway. It was impossible to make it out clearly between the gloom of the corridor and the brilliance of the gunfire, the two of them strobing – black, white, black, white – turning everything into slow motion chaos. Some sort of tentacles, extending themselves into the corridor. They reached the man. One slammed into his face. Another curled around his throat. But it was the third that killed him, punching right through his stomach and dragging him up the wall, a great streak of blood following up behind him. The man was screaming, his legs writhing in agony. But his finger was clenched around the trigger and he was still firing. His last bullets went wild, tearing into the ceiling and floor.

Something spilled out of the lift. It seemed to be partly human, but there was smoke everywhere now, adding to the confusion. A second creature followed it. The two had come up together. A huge pincer snapped open and shut. Black eyes on stalks. Straight out of a nightmare. It saw Scarlett and the others and began to move with frightening speed.

“Hurry!”

It was the first time that Lohan had raised his voice. He broke into a run. Scarlett followed him, convinced that they didn’t have a chance. There was no emergency exit, nowhere for them to go and the things from the lift must already be closing in on them. Red turned round and fired twice. The bullets had no effect. Then Draco dragged something out of his pocket, brought it to his mouth and threw it. A hand grenade! The pin was still between his teeth. A door to one of the other flats opened and Lohan threw himself in, pulling Scarlett with him, just as there was a deafening explosion and an orange ball of flame in the corridor behind.

Scarlett leant against the wall on the other side of the door. She was choking and there were tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t crying. It was the dust and the plaster which had cascaded down, almost blinding her. She wiped a sleeve across her eyes. Red slammed the door shut. It had about half a dozen locks, chains and bolts which he fastened, one after another. Lohan snapped out another command. Draco muttered something in reply.

The flat they were in was very similar to the one they had left but more run down, with even less furniture. There was a woman living here. She had opened the door to let them in and Scarlett recognized her. It took her a moment to work out where they had met but then she realized – it was the fortuneteller from the temple. She was standing by the door, blinking nervously. Her three birds were in their cages on a table, hopping up and down, frightened by all the noise.

Lohan hadn’t stopped moving. He was heading towards a second door and the kitchen beyond. “This way, Scarlett,” he called out.

Scarlett followed him into a room with a fridge and a cooker and little else. A large hole had been knocked through the wall. The sides were jagged, with old bits of wire and pipework sticking out, but this was the way out. They climbed through the brickwork and into the next-door flat and then into the one after. Each one had been smashed through to provide a passageway that couldn’t be seen from the corridor. The last two flats were completely abandoned, with dust and rubble all over the floor. They came to a window with a steel structure on the other side. A fire escape. Lohan jerked the window open. They climbed out.

Scarlett found herself standing on a small, square platform with a series of metal ladders zigzagging all the way down to street level, about twenty floors below. It was very cold up there, the air currents rushing between the buildings, carrying with them a driving rain. She looked down onto the sort of scene she would normally have associated with a major accident. There must have been at least a dozen police cars parked at different angles in the street. They might have turned their sirens off but their lights were flashing, brilliant even in the daylight. Barricades were still being erected around the building and all the traffic had been stopped. Men in black and silver uniforms were holding the crowds back.

They couldn’t go down. The fire escape led into the middle of all the chaos and the moment they reached the bottom, they would be seized. Worse still one of the policemen had seen them. He shouted out a warning and pointed. At once a group of armed officers ran forward and began to climb up.

Lohan didn’t seem worried. “We don’t go down,” he muttered. “We go up.”

There were just three flights of stairs from the platform to the roof and, aware of the policemen getting nearer all the time, Scarlett made her way up as quickly as she could, keeping close to the wall in case any shots were fired. Draco and Red followed up behind and a minute later they had all reached the roof and were squatting there, catching their breath in the shelter of a rusty water tank. The rain was slicing down. Scarlett was already drenched, her hair clinging to her eyes.

Lohan had taken out a mobile phone. He pressed a direct dial button and spoke urgently into it, then folded it away. The other men hadn’t said a word but they seemed to understand what had been agreed. Then Red muttered something and pointed. Scarlett looked up, wondering what he had seen. And shuddered. She had thought their situation couldn’t get any worse… but it just had.

There was a cloud of what looked like black smoke in the distance, high above the tower blocks of Kowloon. It was travelling towards them, against the wind. Scarlett knew at once that it couldn’t be smoke. It was the swarm of flies. They had come back again. They were heading directly for her.

“Move!”

Lohan set off at once, running across the roof, no longer caring if he was seen or not. He had hung the jade pendant around his neck and Scarlett realized that as long as he was wearing it, the flies would know where he was. But that was his plan. It was the reason he had taken it from her. He was protecting her, making himself the target in her place. He leapt over stacks of cable, moving towards the back of the building. Scarlett followed. She still had no idea where they were heading, how they were going to get down.

They reached the other side and came to a breathless halt. Once again, Scarlett was completely thrown. There was no fire escape, no ladder, no window cleaner’s lift. The next apartment block was about twenty metres away and there was no possible means of crossing. Lohan was standing at the very edge of the building. For a moment he looked like a ghost or maybe a scarecrow with his pale skin and his dark clothes, drenched by the falling rain. His black hair had fallen across his face. The scar seemed more prominent than ever.

“Follow me,” he instructed. “Don’t look down.”

And then he stepped into space.

Scarlett waited for him to fall, to be killed twenty storeys below. Instead, impossibly, he seemed to be standing in midair, as if he had learned to levitate. More magic? That was her first thought – but then she looked more closely and saw that it was just an incredible trick. There was a bridge constructed between the two buildings, a strip of almost invisible glass or Perspex… some see-through material strong enough to take his weight. Nobody would have been able to see it from the street or from the air, and even now she might not have been able to make it out but for the rain hitting it and the faint coating of grime that covered the surface. It still looked as if Lohan was suspended between the two buildings. He had walked some distance from the edge of the roof and was standing over the road, the toy cars and people far below.

It would be Scarlett’s turn next.

A door burst open on the roof behind her. A staircase led up inside and their pursuers had finally reached them, pouring out onto the roof, nine of them, human from the look of them but with dead eyes and pale, empty faces that might have spent years out of the light. Their hair was ragged, their clothes mouldering away and they wore no shoes. Some of them carried long, jagged knives. Others had lengths of chain hanging down to the ground and wooden clubs spiked with nails. Slowly, they began to fan out.

“You – go!” Red pushed Scarlett forward, propelling her towards the glass bridge. “Draco…” He finished the sentence in Chinese.

There was no time to argue. The creatures were already getting closer. Red moved towards them, away from the safety of the bridge, his own gun raised in front of him. Scarlett looked down. The bridge had no sides, no safety rails. The surface was wet and slippery. Worse still, because it was transparent, it felt completely insubstantial. She could imagine herself falling through it or losing her balance and plunging over the side. And she could see where she would land. The road was there, waiting for her far below.

Red fired a shot and the sound of it propelled her forward. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t see what was happening behind her. All her concentration was focused on what she had to do. She took one step, then another. Now she was in mid-air with the wind buffeting her. She felt Draco behind her, urging her on, but fear was paralysing her. Lohan had told her not to look down, but if she didn’t, how could she be sure that her foot was coming down in the right place? The rain sliced into her face, half-blinding her. She could feel it running down her cheeks.

There were two more shots but then they stopped and she heard screaming and knew that Red had been caught, that terrible things were being done to him. Scarlett hated herself for doing nothing to help him. He had stayed behind for her, to give her the time to cross, and she was literally walking out on him. All these people were risking their lives for her. The whole apartment block with its knocked-through walls and this incredible glass bridge had been prepared for the time she might need it. And the crazy thing was that she still didn’t know who they were or why they had decided to help.

Somehow, she got to the other side, taking the last step with a surge of relief. At that exact moment, Red’s screams ended and she turned round to see him being held in the air by a group of the creatures who were standing at the edge of the building she had just left. His body was limp. Blood was pouring from a dozen stab wounds in his arms and chest. Then they let him go. He seemed to glide rather than fall through the air, as if he weighed nothing. Finally, he smashed into one of the parked cars, crumpling the roof and shattering the front windscreen. An alarm went off. With a screech of triumph, the creatures who had killed him lurched themselves onto the bridge.

Lohan was standing, watching them. He let them get about half-way across before he stretched out a hand and closed it around a lever set in a wall. He smiled briefly, malevolently, and pulled. At once, the bridge collapsed. It was like one of those magic wands used by conjurors at children’s parties. The different sections folded, then plunged downwards. Five of the creatures went with it, hitting the road in an explosion of bone and blood. The rest were left on the other side, jabbering and shaking their fists, unable to cross.

Behind them, something vague and dark rose up over the side of the rooftop. The swarm of flies had arrived. Lohan signalled and set off across the second apartment block, making for a door on the far side. If he was going to mourn the man who had died, it would have to wait. He went through, waited for Scarlett and Draco, then slammed it shut. There was a flight of stairs on the other side. It led down into a room humming with pipes and banks of machinery. There was a service lift on the other side. Lohan hit the button and the doors opened at once. The three of them piled in. He pressed two buttons: the ground floor and the basement.

Scarlett stood inside the confined space, panting. Her heart was racing at a hundred miles an hour. It felt unnatural to be suddenly standing still, knowing that there was danger all around but there was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go as the lift carried them down. She just hoped there wouldn’t be anyone waiting for them at the bottom.

But Lohan was completely relaxed, leaning against the back wall, the pendant hanging around his neck. Water was dripping down his forehead, over his eyes. “You are to go with Draco,” he said. “I have made arrangements. There are people waiting. You will be safe with them.”

“What about you?” Scarlett asked.

“I will lead them away.” He lifted the pendant, glanced at it, let it fall again.

“They’ll kill you…”

“If they find me, they will kill me. But my life is not in question here. You are all that matters. You must get away.”

“This is my fault.” Scarlett felt miserable. She had led the creatures to the apartment. They were only here because of her. “I’m sorry…”

“You are one of the Five!” Lohan stared at her as if he couldn’t believe what she had just said. “Do not be sorry. Do not be a little girl. You have the power to destroy them. Use it.”

The lift doors opened. They had arrived at the ground floor. Lohan stepped forward and looked outside. Scarlett could hear the wail of police cars, but there was nobody around and she guessed that the police hadn’t yet worked out that they had crossed from one building to another. But the jade pendant would bring them soon enough. Lohan gave a last instruction in Chinese to Draco and then he was gone. The doors slid shut behind him.

“You stay with me now,” Draco muttered.

Red had been killed. The man with the machine gun was dead. Lohan was probably next. But he didn’t seem to care.

The lift continued down to the basement. It opened into an underground car park. There was a shiny black car waiting for them and at first Scarlett couldn’t believe what had been arranged for her, what was waiting there beneath the building. But at the same time, she knew it made complete sense. She remembered what Lohan had told her. The entire city was against her. Every policeman, every surveillance camera, every official was looking out for her. How was she meant to get past them all?

The car was a hearse. There was an open coffin in the back, the inside of it lined with cream-coloured satin with a pillow at one end. Two men were waiting for her. They were dressed in dark suits, like undertakers, but she recognized them from The Peak. They were the ones who had killed Mrs Cheng. One of them made a gesture. Scarlett knew what she had to do.

This time she didn’t argue. Without even hesitating, she climbed into the back of the hearse and lay down. It occurred to her that only a few hours ago, when they had tried to lock her in the boot of a car, she had thought it would be like being buried alive. And here it was, happening for real.

She laid her head on the pillow. The two men moved towards her. And then once again darkness claimed her as the lid was bolted into place.