The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(88)
And now there began to be noises from neighbouring rooms, as if other things were keeping pace with us beyond the walls. Kipps was cursing now, moving ever faster, shying away from open corridors, squeezing through cracks, dropping through chutes of ice and rubble; Holly and I came after, ushering the stumbling George, and all the while Lockwood brought up the rear, rapier out, steadily retreating, staring back the way we had come.
And then we arrived at a flight of steps with a long corridor below, and saw at the end of that corridor an arch that gave us a glimpse of the outside.
Down the steps, clattering, wheezing, particles of ice falling from our capes.
Kipps halted. ‘Wait! There’s movement out there!’
‘Don’t stop!’ That was Lockwood at the back. ‘We’ve got at least four of them close behind!’
There was nothing else we could do, and all our strength was gone. We stumbled along the passage, hearing bare feet slapping on the stairs. Holly and I were pulling George bodily after us, Kipps was cursing. We fell out through the archway into the half-light – and came to a shuddering stop.
The way was blocked. The chase was over.
We were in a street on the edge of Trafalgar Square, and it thronged with London’s dead.
22
It was me who saved us. I was the quickest this time. On either side of the doorway were spreading piles of ice and stones that had fallen from the wall above. Grabbing Kipps’s and George’s arms, I pulled them with me, over and down behind the nearest pile of rubble. A moment later, Holly and Lockwood were doing the same on the opposite side. We ducked our heads low.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Kipps hissed. ‘Don’t move.’
As all-time unnecessary suggestions went, it was way up there. Breathing wasn’t high on our agenda, let alone movement. My heartbeat was a bass drum in my ears. I was pressing so hard against the stones I thought I’d probably push right through.
Pale shapes came rushing out of the doorway with horrid leaps and bounds. One was a limping man with a broad-brimmed hat. They plunged past our hiding place and continued on into the road.
Now, mindless as the wandering dead most probably were, driven only by mute compulsions, they really should have seen us behind those piles of rock. We weren’t hidden very well. For starters, our cloaks still smoked like chimneys, and Kipps’s icy crest-feathers poked like crazy periscopes above the topmost boulder. But the shapes that had pursued us took not the slightest notice of us any longer. Nor did the great group of spirits turn aside from where they jostled in the street. There was something else they wanted even more.
A small company of silver-clad men and women were progressing slowly up the road from Trafalgar Square. There were six in total, and we knew at once that they were living. They were far more solid than the milling forms around them, and moved with focused, purposeful movements. Metallic clinks and clattering drifted towards us on the freezing air. They were the first such sounds we had heard in hours; the effect was almost shocking.
All six wore light helmets, and goggles similar to the ones Kipps used. They didn’t have cloaks, but long tunics hanging loosely over trousers. These outfits seemed to be made of the same material as the capes we’d taken from the Orpheus Society. Their backs were burdened with ice, and flickered with silent, chilly flames.
Two of the company, trudging at the centre of the group, had clusters of small glass cylinders hanging over their shoulders. The other four (women, I thought) wore silver stilt legs, similar to those of the Orpheus secretary. Their job was to protect the men on foot: they carried long defensive poles with silver tips, which they used to keep the dead at bay.
Altogether, maybe twenty or thirty grey forms swarmed around the little company. They sniffed at the smoke trail, twitching and reaching out for the living with their long, pale, frozen hands. The proximity of the dead did not disturb the group. The women on stilts waded waist-high through the throng, who rippled back as they sought to evade the painful touch of silver. Occasionally the stilt walkers threshed amongst the figures with their poles, stirring them up as a cook might a stew. There was the smell of burning. All the while, the two men with the cylinders continued marching along the road. They seemed resigned to the tumult, even slightly bored.
I looked at the cylinders. Under the coating of ice you could see that some of them shone with a vibrant light. I thought of the silver fences we’d seen, with the bright white flecks of plasm hanging on them. And I knew that this was a team that collected the plasm from such places, then carried it back to the woman at Fittes House. Suddenly, beneath my weariness and desperation, beneath the awful numbing cold, a great anger flared inside me – a desire to see justice done.
When the dreadful group had disappeared, we emerged from our hiding places and went on, slowly, stiffly, going in the opposite direction. No one felt the need to speak about it. Everyone understood what we had seen.
Mists filled Trafalgar Square, and the column at its centre rose through them like the launch trail of a rocket, stark and straight and grey against the pitch-black sky. We kept as close to the perimeter as we could; once we had to duck inside the shell of a blackened, frost-blown church as something else on silver legs passed by. Otherwise we were undisturbed. Soon we came to the great black canyon of the Strand, with cliff-buildings towering above us. It was a scene of desolation, of swirling mists and shadow – and there were the steps of Fittes House rising on the right-hand side.