The Beauty of Destruction Read Online Free Page B

insane.’
    ‘But that could be—’ she started.
    ‘We need to go,’ he told her, and started wading back towards Alhambra Road where the Range Rover had been parked. Beth didn’t move.
    ‘Go where?’ she demanded. ‘Everything’s fucked, isn’t it?’ Du Bois turned back towards her, still looking around. ‘I mean, you’ve just told me that the whole fucking world’s been driven mad … right?’ She sat down in the water. It practically came up to her neck. ‘And the only thing that’s stopping whatever it is that’s growing out of everyone else is the little machines inside us, right?’
    ‘We don’t have time—’ du Bois started.
    ‘Wrong! We’ve got all the fucking time! Because unless I’ve misunderstood, it’s the end of the world, right? And the only people not going to be affected by these … these spores are people like you! Well, I’m sorry, but that means a world entirely populated by either the mad or wankers!’
    For a moment Beth thought she saw du Bois’s resolve falter. Then his face hardened again.
    ‘Your sister has gone, and that means the only hope humanity has at all is in the genetic sample I took from her. That sample is in the hands of the Do As You Please clan. They are a group of psychopathic children who use the same kind of technology that runs through your body to turn people into their fantasy playthings. They tried to take your sister, they tried to kill us, they turned all those people into their slaves and made us kill them. Even if we are all doomed I will not have them profit from our fall.’ He all but spat the word ‘fall’.
    Beth opened her mouth to argue but as she did something occurred to her, and with it guilt.
    ‘Maude and Uday!’ she said, standing up.
     
    They had seen the people warping and shifting as they made their way back to the Range Rover. Human bodies as cocoons consumed in the act of birthing. Flesh ran and flowed, distended mouths were frozen in silent screams.
    ‘Will these work?’ Beth had asked quietly, referring to the recently soaked guns du Bois had loaned her. She felt like her gorge should be rising, that panic should overwhelm her, but instead she felt strangely and artificially calm; sedated yet somehow still aware.
    ‘Not reliably,’ du Bois said, intent on checking the local areas, his SA58 FAL carbine at the ready. As they made their way down the flooded, narrow Alhambra Road, away from the now-submerged beach, they could see more of the locals staggering, sliding into the water as the new forms tried to pull themselves free of their host flesh.
    ‘Is it an invasion?’ Beth asked.
    Du Bois considered this. ‘More like an infection,’ he said, sparing a look of contempt for the dead thief floating in the water close to where they’d left the Range Rover.
    Beth climbed into the passenger seat. The door had been torn off by one of the creatures that had accompanied the cult when they had come for her sister on the motorway. Du Bois sighted his weapon on some of the transforming locals who were close to the vehicle. Beth could hear the sounds of violence in the distance. She felt numb. Du Bois handed her the carbine and climbed into the Range Rover, starting it up. With trained precision Beth checked and then readied the weapon. Du Bois put two magazines within easy reach. There was an explosion in the distance. Beth looked around, her eyes freshly wet.
     
    The water had come as far north as Campbell Road. The Range Rover was creating a wake with its passage as they turned into the tree-lined street. One of the locals, a new face growing out of his own, staggered towards the open passenger side and Beth kicked him away with a look of distaste.
    As they had passed through Clarendon Road, and then Albert Road, the two main shopping areas in Southsea, what they had seen looked halfway between a riot and the shell-shocked aftermath of a bombing. Parts of the city were already burning. Some people appeared to have been