Coldbrook (Hammer)(163)

Doorways lined the wide space on both sides, equally spaced along the high walls, all decorated with arched openings and carved reliefs. The doors opened and closed, and each cycle introduced a new couple onto the floor.

Inquisitor – and victim.

There were hundreds of them there, all walking right to left towards the light. Inquisitors marched with solemnity, and their naked victims’ reactions differed widely. Some shouted and raged, others cried, a few fought, and some walked with a blank-faced stare. Several people reminded Jonah of himself, and his heart raced as realities clashed.

Each Inquisitor, each Inquisitors’ companion, represented another Earth fallen to the zombie plague, and the scale was staggering.

And then Jonah saw that the Inquisitors had faces.

He turned to the being who had been haunting him since the moment when the experiment to open the breach had succeeded. The Inquisitor walked as before – solemn, almost proud – but he had removed the strange snout appliance, and the goggles now hung around his neck on a ragged strap made of skin. He blinked against the light, and a soft steam rose from the moisture running from his eyes. Seeming to sense Jonah’s scrutiny, the Inquisitor glanced at him.

His glistening eyes were of the palest blue, piercing and utterly human.

Jonah caught his breath and turned away. It had felt as if the man was looking into his soul. He made sure that the soft ball was secure beneath his tongue, then asked, ‘What of your world?’ His skin was crawling, his balls tingling. Someone just walked over my grave, he thought.

‘This is my world,’ the Inquisitor said.

‘But your time in the navy, on HMS Cardiff. Were your parents proud? Mine would have been. Your father, the miner, do you think he would be proud of you now?’

‘This is my world,’ the Inquisitor said again without acknowledging Jonah’s questions, ‘and pride is a sin.’ In his left hand he held the breathing apparatus that he had worn for so long. In his right he rolled and caressed a set of rosary beads. Jonah had the sudden urge to rip them away, tear them apart to send the beads skittering and bouncing across the marble flooring. But he had not come here to put on a display of petulance.

Once again he tucked the small ball between his teeth and cheek: warm, flexing. Ready to bite.

They followed the flow of people towards the opening that led to sunlight and blue sky, and alongside the staggering architecture, beautiful painted ceilings that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame, and sculptures that seemed to exude a life of their own, Jonah noticed signs of the advanced technology that he knew existed here – floating lights, glimmering laser-fields, and prayers relayed into his mind without sound. The prayers’ tone made him queasy. They shimmered with righteousness.

Unabashed at his nakedness, Jonah and his Inquisitor approached the opening at the end of the hall, and the wide stone arches framed Jonah’s first view out onto this new Earth. For a second the sun was blinding, a comforting warmth on his skin and a prickling distraction in his eyes. But after he had blinked a few times he could see, and he was perhaps not as surprised as he should have been. He’d been prepared for this, after all. And perhaps, having already seen wonders, he had been numbed against more.

He had seen St Peter’s Square a hundred times on television and in newspapers, but little had prepared him for its sheer size and splendour. An atheist all his life, still Jonah had found great beauty and splendour in religious architecture – some of his favourite buildings were cathedrals and churches, and while others were looking at the cross on the wall, he would be wondering at the tunnels, bodies, treasures and mysteries buried beneath his feet.

The square was filled with Inquisitors and their charges. They formed several lines on either side of the Vatican Obelisk, which was topped with a globe, the Earth beautifully wrought in coloured, textured metals. The lines moved forward quickly, the head of each disappearing inside a large structure built on the steps below St Peter’s Basilica. This was something else that Jonah had never seen: an intricate marble-clad building with a gold-domed roof, three main entrances onto the square, and smaller openings leading directly onto the Basilica steps. From here the line of naked, smooth-skinned people was directed up the steps and into the Basilica. Guided by their Inquisitors – in some cases helped along physically – their naked skin was stained with free-flowing blood, and even from this distance he could see that their faces looked wrong – noses snoutlike, eyes bulbous. The steps beneath them were stained black with old spilled blood, the marble having absorbed it over however long this had been happening until it looked as if the Basilica itself was bleeding, black blood running down into the square where worshippers had once sought to gather. These new worshippers were unwilling, and torture was their introduction into the ways of this world.