The Rhesus Chart Read Online Free PDF Page B

screaming of damned telemarketers in hell. Okay, I made that last bit up. But it was
raw
.
    “Close,
dammit
! Close!”
I yelled in Enochian. The door-zombie moaned incoherently and stumbled, collapsing against the portal, just as a bouquet of tentacles reached across the threshold and wrapped themselves around my bomb-carrier zombie in something that was probably not intended as a loving embrace.
    My bomb carrier groaned piteously, with an inner voice so loud that I could feel it in my head even over the unholy din from the tentacle monster. I shuddered. I’ve never actually seen something
kill
a feeder in the night before—disembodiment is all very well, but something told me my minion wouldn’t be coming back for sloppy seconds. But he’d stepped up to the threshold, and he was carrying the basilisk gun, and he’d pushed the self-timer “start” button . . .
“Close the
fucking
door before I invent a whole new hell to banish you to!”
I screamed at the door-corpse. (I am taking a liberty here. I had, and have, no idea what the Enochian for “fuck” is. Probably because the beings who invented that language didn’t have anything remotely approximating mammalian genitalia. Even before their final extinction rendered the whole point moot.)
    I shoved, hard, with my mind. So hard, in fact, that everything began to turn gray and my ears—my physical ears—began to ring.
K syndrome here I come,
I thought with a resigned sense of futility. Angleton was in front of me, approaching the edge of the outer ward, but I could tell this wasn’t going to work—
    There was a soundless flash of light and a deep, resonant thud, as of a gigantic door slamming on the other side of a wall. I felt it in my gut as I stumbled. Another flicker: I couldn’t see properly—
    “Cut the ward, boy, cut it
now
!” Angleton snarled over his shoulder.
    The ward? Oh, right.
I fumbled with my phone and hit the “off” icon on the control app. The light show began to fade. “Hang on, have we closed the portal?” I asked.
    The door to Andy’s office was still half-ajar, a skeletonized hand dangling from the doorknob. Angleton stepped around the remains of the door zombie with the delicate gait of a man in expensive shoes avoiding a dog turd. He raised a hand: dust and bones and other disquieting shapes gathered themselves up from the pile on the threshold and rolled beneath the lintel, vanishing into the darkened space beyond.
    Angleton waited a few seconds, then pulled the door shut with his fingertips. Next he raised the black folder and delicately removed a decal. “By the authority vested in me,” he said, “I declare this office closed.” Then he carefully applied the sticker to the center of the door, and stepped backwards.
    “Have we closed the—” I began to repeat, then stopped. “Hang on. What’s going on?” I stared at the mess of paint, charred patch of carpet, and graffiti’d patch of blank wall at the side of our office area. “Hang on,” I repeated, backing up mentally. “Wow.”
    I took a step towards the wall. Angleton caught my arm. “You don’t want to get too close until it’s had time to anneal.”
    “Until what’s had time?”
    “The ward I placed on Mr. Newstrom’s office. Class ten,” he added, almost smugly.
    “Class
ten
?” I’d heard of wards that strong: I didn’t know we actually
had
any.
    “Yes, boy. By tomorrow morning nobody except you, me, and Mr. Newstrom will even remember there was an office there—and Andy will only do so because he left his coat inside.” He clapped his hands together. “I want you to prepare a report on this incident for me. But be a good chap and fetch Mr. Newstrom back inside first. I believe it has begun to rain, and as I mentioned, he doesn’t have a jacket anymore.”
     • • • 
    I WENT OUTSIDE AND HAULED ANDY IN, AND THEREAFTER WE didn’t get much work done, apart from the inevitable clean-up and sending the surviving Residual Human