The Storm Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Daisy

  Roly

  The Other: I

  Graham

  Dawn

  Cal

  Rilke

  Cal

  Brick

  Cal

  Rilke

  Brick

  The Other: II

  Harry

  Graham

  Morning

  Daisy

  Cal

  Brick

  Rilke

  Daisy

  Rilke

  Cal

  The Other: III

  Graham

  Afternoon

  Rilke

  Daisy

  Brick

  Daisy

  Cal

  Daisy

  Rilke

  Cal

  Daisy

  Brick

  Daisy

  Brick

  Cal

  Daisy

  Rilke

  Cal

  Brick

  Cal

  Brick

  Daisy

  Cal

  Brick

  Rilke

  Daisy

  Cal

  Brick

  Daisy

  Cal

  Rilke

  Daisy

  Cal

  Daisy

  Brick

  Cal

  The Fury

  Evening

  Cal

  Daisy

  Brick

  About The Author

  By the Same Author

  Inserted Copyright

  THE STORM

  Alexander Gordon Smith

  Prologue

  Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

  Anatole France, The Revolt of the Angels

  Daisy

  Sunday, Hemmingway, 11.56 p.m.

  Daisy Brien was everywhere and nowhere, possessed by a creature of fire and locked inside a world of ice.

  She didn’t know how long it had been since she had fallen. Time didn’t seem to have a place here, wherever she was. It could have been a handful of seconds or a million years, there was no way of telling. She hung inside a web of lives, an infinite number of them. They looked like ice cubes, and through the frosted surface of each one she could make out places and people. If she really tried, she could peer into the ice and make sense of those worlds, but doing that made her feel sick, as though she was in the back of a car going too fast around a bend.

  It was here with her, though, the creature, and it wanted her to look. She could feel it inside her head, something made of light. It didn’t speak – Daisy didn’t think they could speak – but it guided her, showing her the things that mattered, stopping her from drifting away into the endless ocean of ice.

  She saw the events of the last few days as if she was reliving them – not just her memories but the memories of her new friends too. Cal, Brick, Adam, Marcus, Jade, even Rilke and Schiller. It had started the same way for all of them, even though they didn’t know each other, even though they were hundreds of miles apart. A headache that had gone on for days – thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump – like somebody trying to break into their skulls.

  And the moment the headache had stopped, the Fury had started.

  The whole world had wanted to kill them. She saw it inside the ice cubes, Cal running for his life as hundreds of people came after him at school, his best friends trying to tear him to pieces. And Brick, sitting in the basement of an abandoned theme park with his girlfriend, about as happy as Brick could be until she started trying to bite out his throat. Adam – poor little Adam, who had never said a word since the Fury started – had been at the dentist’s. Jade in a taxi. Marcus at home. Rilke and Schiller, the twins, had been at a party, almost trampled into mud in the middle of the night.

  And her. She watched it now, although the slim twelve-year-old she saw sobbing in her parents’ bedroom didn’t really seem like her, not any more. Her mum and dad were dead beside her, propped up next to each other like dolls on a shelf. Her mum had done it, poisoning her dad and then herself. She had done it so she wouldn’t hurt Daisy, to protect her. It hadn’t protected her from the ambulance people who arrived at her house, though, who wanted to murder her. She had only just escaped with her life. They all had.

  No, not all of them. How many had died? Daisy wasn’t sure, but she knew that there had been others like her, dozens, maybe hundreds. They had been slaughtered by their friends, their families. Then the world had forgotten them, like they had never existed.

  The thought was awful, and she turned away from the ice. But she couldn’t escape the visions, not here, not in this place. She watched as Cal rescued her, as they drove up to the theme park where Brick waited, drawn there by some kind of instinct. Fursville. It had been falling apart, and it smelled of damp and dead things. But it had been safe. It had been home.

  Until she arrived. Rilke. She’d shown up one morning with her brother, Schiller. The boy was frozen – literally locked in ice. Daisy had been scared of her from the start. She’d known that Rilke was dangerous. She didn’t realise how dangerous, though, until Rilke had killed Brick’s girlfriend – who was locked in the basement – and another feral. She had shot them in cold blood. She’d claimed that the Fury was happening because they – her, Schiller, Daisy, all of them – were no longer human. They were changing into something else, she’d said, something incredible. She’d been crazy.

  But she’d been right.

  Schiller had been the first to change. Daisy had seen it with her own eyes. He had woken from his sleep not as a boy but as a creature made of fire, a creature whose eyes burned, a creature with wings. An angel. Only . . . only not. It wasn’t an angel like in the stories her mum had once told her. Not a cherub with a harp and a halo. It was something older than time, something immensely powerful – so powerful that it couldn’t live here, in their time and space, without a host. That’s why it needed Schiller.

  They all had one, living inside them. That’s what made them special, it’s what made the rest of the world hate them so much. Daisy could feel hers, it was on the verge of waking just like Schiller’s had. Cal, Brick, Adam, Rilke, all of them, they had angels in them. Sooner or later they would hatch and they too would be made of fire. They would be able to pull reality apart with just a thought.

  Daisy shivered, even though it wasn’t cold here. She didn’t think she even had a body, wherever she was. She had been shot, by a policeman. She and the others had gone to look for food, but they had been attacked by the ferals – hundreds of them. It had been Rilke’s fault, she had called the police. Rilke had wanted them to be attacked. She had said it was the only way for them to see the truth about why they were changing.

  That it was their job to wipe humankind from the face of the planet.

  And she’d shown them how. Daisy didn’t have to watch it in the ice, every detail of it was etched into the flesh of her brain. Schiller, drenched in fire, floating above the ground, his eyes two pockets of starlight. He had twitched his fingers and turned the crowds of ferals into ash – hundreds of them – and scattered all that they were to the wind. And he had spoken, not him but his angel. A word that had no place here, which had unknitted the world, unmade reality. His voice had wiped the land clean, all the way to the horizon. It had rocked time and space and left the universe trembling.

  Rilke had taken that as proof that she was right. But she wasn’t. Daisy was sure of it. The angels were strong, but they weren’t evil. They weren’t anything. She couldn’t sense any emotion there at
all, in the thing that squatted in her soul. They could only do what they were told to. They were more like machines, sent to put things right.

  Because something else was very wrong, something she couldn’t even bear to think about. She saw it now, in the corner of her eye, an iceberg that crashed and cracked towards her, something inside it that made her want to scream.

  The man in the storm.

  He had arrived at the same time as the angels, only he had been born inside a corpse. He hung in a hurricane and sucked up the world through the black hole of his mouth, devouring everything. Daisy didn’t know exactly where he was but she knew thousands had already died, pulled into the churning vortex, their whole lives made nothing. He was the reason they were here, she was sure of it. They had to fight him, before he swallowed them all.

  Is that it? she asked the creature. Please tell me.

  If it answered she couldn’t understand it. She felt so alone, and she sought comfort in another vision, this one happening right now – three boys sleeping inside a beaten-up car. She pulled herself closer to the ice, seeing Cal and Brick and Adam, all dreaming the same dream. She was there too, her body anyway, lying in the boot cocooned in ice. What would it be like, she wondered, when the angel burst from her chest? Would it hurt? Would she know what to do?

  All she knew was that soon the angel would wake. Then she too would be a thing of fire and fury.

  And the man in the storm would be waiting for her.

  Roly

  Monday, Hemsby, 12.22 a.m.

  Roly Highland was drunk. He staggered down the beach, an eveningful of cheap rum making the world reel with every step. At one point he missed his footing entirely and sprawled forwards, landing on his face. For some reason he found it insanely funny, giggling into the soft, cool sand. What felt like half a year later he pushed himself up, realising he’d dropped his bottle somewhere. It was almost pitch black here, just the faintest hint of moonlight making it through the clouds. The sea was right in front of him, as dark and as flat as slate. He could hear it whispering, urging him towards it. He didn’t like the sea, not since he’d almost drowned in it when he was eleven.

  ‘Can’t hurt me now, though,’ he slurred as he teetered back to his feet. ‘’Cos I’m drunk!’

  He gave up on the rum – there had only been a couple of mouthfuls of backwash anyway – and set off to his left. His best mates Lee and Connor were out here somewhere, plus Connor’s new girl Hayley. Roly’s thirteen-year-old brother Howie was around as well, although he’d wandered off an hour or so ago claiming he wasn’t feeling too good. That was the rum, it did that to you. Roly’s head had been thumping for most of the night too.

  ‘Hey,’ he called out into the darkness. Something erupted upwards from nearby, the flap of its wings like somebody clapping. The silence it left behind, broken only by that same endless whisper of the waves, was almost spooky. ‘Whoooooooo,’ he said, nearly falling flat on his face again, scuttling crablike on his hands until he found his feet. The others were probably hiding, planning to jump out at him or something. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him flinch.

  ‘Because I’m invincible!’ he shouted, his words swallowed by the sea. He giggled again, thinking of how impressed they’d be when they failed to scare him. Connor was two years older, seventeen now, and there were times when Roly felt like a total baby in front of him. That’s why he’d drunk so much tonight – he’d matched his friend drink for drink and was still standing. Connor had to be impressed by that, and Hayley too. She was proper fit, and maybe if he impressed her enough tonight then she’d dump Connor and go out with him instead.

  Only if he could find them, though. Where the hell were they?

  ‘Oi!’ he screamed, lobbing a few choice swear words into the night. The beach had been pretty deserted all evening, which was weird considering it was a Sunday smack-bang in the middle of summer. It was probably something to do with whatever had happened along the coast earlier. There had been some kind of explosion north of here, apparently, somewhere up by the old Fursville theme park. Roly hadn’t seen anything but he’d felt the tremors at about seven.

  ‘Mines,’ Connor had said matter-of-factly. They’d been sitting in the older boy’s flat and the blast had been so powerful that the windows had rattled.

  ‘Huh?’ Lee had said.

  ‘Them old sea mines, from the war and stuff. They find them all the time, they probably just blew one up.’

  They had all nodded, and that had been that. Connor was seventeen now, and he was going to join the army. He knew about stuff like explosives.

  God, that all seemed like years ago. Roly staggered onwards, gulping down salted air and trying to remember what else had happened that evening. Already some of it was fading away, like disappearing ink.

  ‘Screw you, guys,’ he called out, fed up with their games. ‘I’m going home.’

  He stopped, reeling from side to side in an effort to work out which way led back to town. The sea lay to his right, vast and black and menacing, so he steered his stubborn legs left towards the dunes. A soft breeze kicked up grains of sand, carrying them into his mouth where they crunched between his teeth. He muttered curses as he struggled on the crumbling ground, grabbing rope-like strands of sea grass to help haul himself off the beach. Once he was over the hump of the dune the going was easier, and he stumble-ran down the other side, wondering if there was any way of getting another drink.

  The first line of Hemsby’s rubbish wooden beach bungalows was in sight when he heard voices up ahead. Or were they voices? They sounded more like grunts and whimpers, dogs maybe. He ducked down on to one knee, planting his hand in the earth to stop himself tumbling. Was it his imagination or was the air suddenly colder? He shivered, tilting his head and waiting to see if the noises came again.

  They did, a distant, snorting squeal that belonged in the slaughterhouse up the road. There were footsteps too, fast and hard, coming this way. It had to be Connor and Lee taking the piss. They were probably still trying to scare him – and it was working, his pulse tripping, the pleasant numbness of the rum starting to wear away.

  Man up, Roly, he told himself. He couldn’t look scared, not in front of the others. They’d never let him forget it. He rose unsteadily, creeping on to the tarmac road which seemed to sprout organically from the beach. He walked around a bungalow as the noises grew louder, wondering how long it would be before the lights came on inside and the owners started yelling at them the way they did most weekends.

  The road curled round to the right, widening into the beachside promenade up ahead. There were streetlights there, forming puddles of sickly yellow light which seemed to make the shadowed parts of the street even darker. Another cry barked out from between two shuttered arcades fifty metres away, those hammered footsteps getting closer. Then somebody shouted, a voice so full of grief and terror that Roly didn’t recognise it until a figure skidded out on to the road, slipping on the sandy tarmac and crumpling into a heap.

  ‘Howie?’ Roly said, watching his little brother scrabble for a footing. What the hell was he up to? Howie lifted his head. He was still some distance away, but there was something wrong with his face. His mouth hung open, surely too wide, his eyes huge and white and wild. Roly took a step forward, adrenalin stripping the last of the alcohol in his system and leaving him as sober as he had ever felt in his life. ‘Howie,’ he called out. ‘What’s wrong?’

  There were more footsteps, he realised, coming from the same direction. His brother made it to his feet and started running towards him, his arms wheeling, just as Connor sprinted out from between the arcades. The older kid didn’t even stop for breath as he turned up the street towards Roly. Hayley followed, then Lee, then some guy that Roly had never seen before in his life, all of them legging it towards him at full pelt. Something really bad had to have happened, because they all looked as though they were seething with anger.

  Not anger, he thought. Fury.

 
His brother had halved the gap between them now, foam spraying from his lips. Connor was closing on him fast, uttering the same guttural wet barks. The urge to turn and bolt was so strong that Roly almost went, but he couldn’t leave his brother.

  ‘Howie, what’s wrong?’ he asked. Howie didn’t answer, just kept running, pounding down the street in the hand-me-down Nikes that Roly had given him last Christmas. They all kept running, a tide of people surging along the promenade with nothing but hatred in their faces. ‘Howie?’ he said again, his voice cracked and broken, ‘Howie!’

  Howie seemed to see him for the first time, and his expression flooded with relief.

  ‘Roly,’ he cried. ‘Help me!’

  Even as the words left Howie’s mouth Connor reached him, grabbing a handful of his T-shirt. They tripped on each other, falling hard in a tangle of limbs.

  Roly ran at them, watching in disbelief as Connor drove his knuckles into Howie’s cheek. Even twenty-five metres away he heard the dull thump. Howie cried out, his hands slapping at his attacker, his eyes locked on Roly silently screaming help me help me help me.

  ‘Hey!’ Roly yelled, still sprinting, twenty metres away now. ‘Get off hi—’

  His world turned inside out, a soft, dark explosion inside his head that seemed to burn every single thought into oblivion.

  Every thought but one.

  Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it.

  The boy on the ground wasn’t his brother. It wasn’t even human. Disgust boiled inside his stomach, raging into a white-hot fury that drove him down the street. Time slowed, everything perfectly quiet compared to the sapper’s fire that flared in the very centre of his mind. Only one thing was important. There was only one thing in the entire world that he had to do –

  Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it

  – because this thing was wrong, it was his enemy, it was something that shouldn’t be, that couldn’t be –

  Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it