“They tried to send me mad, you know,” he said. “Can you believe that?”
I looked at him, with his tangled hair, tufty stubble and bulging eyes, and couldn’t believe that it would ever have taken that much.
“They tried to get me hooked. They showed me ghosts and slivers of the truth. Lord knows why but I think they wanted me to kill my wife.”
We left Tooting behind us and, following the mass of drones, roughly retraced my old route to work — through Clapham, Brixton, Stockwell and Lambeth. The further we went, the more the streets grew clotted with crowds and the harder it became to maneuver through the tide of humanity.
“The cat had a message for you,” said the prince, swerving fast around a double-decker which sprawled across the length of the road like a great red seal bathing in the sun.
“I’m sorry?”
Arthur drummed his fingers excitedly on the steering wheel. “He said you’d need a phrase. For the Process. An incantation to close the trap. He told me you’d know what to do.”
I thought for a moment, then: “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Although I feared that the journey would last forever, that we would drive through this shadow realm, I feared still more what was waiting for us at our destination. Then we turned a corner, the exterior of Waterloo station came into view and at last I realized where it was the drones were heading.
The streets were now so choked and thronged that we had no choice but to abandon the car and take our chances amongst the mob. Stepping carefully from the vehicle and trying our best to stop our ears against the cries of the crowd, we moved toward the station. The crowd seemed mostly oblivious to us, too close to the object of their quest to pay us much heed. We had to join the surge, give in, become a part of the torrent and let ourselves be swept into Waterloo.
The place, though packed, seemed eerily neglected. The small shops, fast food outlets and newsagents were entirely untouched, unstaffed but still open for business — burgers cold to the touch, days-old newspapers lying undisturbed, a rack of sandwiches starting to turn green and rancid behind their plastic wrappers. The drones ignored them all, even their needs for food and current affairs now subsumed by the urge to reach their destination. There was death, too — mangled cadavers clogging up the escalators, a solitary ticket inspector trampled underfoot, the flyblown corpses of a guide dog and its master — but Arthur and I walked past it all.
We were pushed through the main part of the station, then moved along with the drones, allowing ourselves to be jostled up an Escher maze of concrete, unable to stop or slow down, trying not to think too hard about those who were thrown to the floor and trampled underfoot. We emerged onto the South Bank, almost exactly opposite the spot where, in a lunch-hour long ago, I’d sat and watched Barbara devour a cheese baguette.
Before us was the river, the great dark width of the Thames, and there at last we saw it — the sea beast, the great serpent, the tyrant of the seven heads.
It must have been a crash landing. The Houses of Parliament looked smashed and half-demolished, Cleopatra’s Needle was snapped in two and the Eye leant askew like something had simply batted it aside. In the distance, the spires of the business district stood darkened and empty. Boats of every kind — sight-seeing vessels, pleasure cruisers, industrial transport ships, floating restaurants and a fleet of police launches — had been hurled against the bank, where they lay shattered like broken toys, reduced to so much driftwood and debris.
The sheer mass of the creature had caused the river to burst its banks. Water overflowed and sluiced across the pavement, making the ground slippery and treacherous.
The entire length of the Thames as far as the eye could see was filled with a vast black shadow, just out of sight. The water around it was bubbling and broiling in distress, shooting out jets of steam and malevolent emissions from the deep. All that was visible of the beast were slender tubes, long thin tentacular things which snaked out of the water and came limply to rest on the pavement like stems of meat or straws of flesh.
Our ampersand had made the people of this city so grateful! They rushed out to meet us, eager to offer their services, aching to become part of something greater and more wonderful than themselves. And, honestly, who amongst us can blame them for that?
To our horror, Arthur and I saw what was happening. All the people who had been hurrying with such desperation through the city now dashed on toward the riverbank, skidding, sliding along the pavement with such insanely enthusiastic speed that I thought they were in danger of toppling into the water. But no, they came to a halt just in time and fell to their knees. Then, humbly, reverentially, each and every one of them picked up a tendril in their hands and, in a moment of unutterable obscenity, took it into their mouths, opening wide, gobbling with infantile glee. The suckled for a moment, their faces suffused with pleasure, before, disgustingly satiated, they collapsed onto their backs and crawled away into the city, chattering to themselves, bleating nonsense words and strings of impossible numbers. One of these unfortunates blundered past me, his eyes hopeless and black, his lips able to move only in the service of Leviathan, like a termite, an insect helplessly in thrall. I tried to stop him but the drone barely seemed to notice and he shouldered his way past, still gibbering his incomprehensible language.
The city was Leviathan’s now. It belonged, lock, stock and barrel to this monstrosity, this implacable enemy of life.
This is a slanderous misrepresentation. We were only ever doing our jobs, fulfilling our quota and offering our customers the kind of top-quality service which they have deservedly come to expect.
As we reached the riverbank, I heard a noisy heaving to my right. The prince was doubled up, powerless in the grip of regurgitation, spewing his breakfast onto the tarmac.
I was hunting through my pockets to see if I couldn’t find the poor man a tissue when somebody shouted my name. With a gunslinger swivel, I turned around.
Joe Streater stood behind me. By his side, stumbling and puffy faced — my landlady.
“Abbey?”
She looked at me blankly. “Leviathan?”
“This is your fault,” Streater said.
“Me?”
“They promised I could save her. But as soon as she stepped into the snow… It wouldn’t have happened if I’d got to her sooner. If you hadn’t gone and hidden her from me.”
“I only tried to keep her safe. You’re the one who practically kidnapped the poor girl.”
We were so occupied in our argument (soundtracked by the continued retching of the future king of England) that we didn’t even notice what Abbey did next, didn’t see her as she staggered toward the water’s edge, her eyes speaking only of hunger and lust. It was Joe who stopped speaking first. He was staring past me, toward the river.
“Abs?” he shouted, but it was already too late. Before either of us could stop her, she crouched down, reached for a tendril, placed the thing between her lips and gurgled in delight.
“Abbey!” I shouted. “Darling, for God’s sake!”
Streater glared at me. “Please,” he said to her. “Please, babe. Don’t do that.”
But she was already finished. Abbey removed the tendril from her mouth and turned her face upon us. The change was absolute. Her eyes were pinpricks and she was chattering too fast — impossible formulae which should never have been spoken aloud, vile, blasphemous things whose very sound made some ancient part of my brain recoil in reptilian disgust.