The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel Read Free Page B

. A hotline was set up too, plastered
at the bottom of every news report. New discoveries came in every minute.
    The stones were everywhere.
    “It’s just a rock.” Mina heard the disappointment
in her voice as she spoke. “I was expecting something more… I don’t know. It’s
just a rock.”
    A leathery-skinned old woman grabbed Mina’s arm,
madness in her rheumy eyes, and barked at her. “It’s aliens. They’ve sent ‘undreds
of meteorites to Earth to colonise us. That stone is gunna crack open like a
coconut and spill its load into the atmosphere, you mark me words. We’re all
dead!”
    Mina yanked her arm away and rubbed the finger
marks left on her skin. She clung to David, but he paid her no attention,
focused only on making it past the police cordon. Mina covered her mouth in
shock when she saw him knee a child out of his way. The little boy fell to his
knees, got up, then went crying to his mummy, arms outstretched and begging to
be picked up.
    “David, you just hurt a child.”
    “The brat shouldn’t have been in the way. Ah, here
we are, finally.”
    They made it over to a burly police sergeant with
a clipboard in his hands. He was grinding his teeth and taking slow, deep
breaths. His wide eyes examined David and Mina with suspicion. “Stand back,
please.”
    “We’re with the Slough Echo, ” David
snapped.
    The sergeant ran a finger down his clipboard and nodded.
“Okay, step inside the cordon, but don’t go within six feet of the object.”
    David swooped beneath the police tape without
another word. Mina took a moment to thank the sergeant before doing the same.
    The black stone sat in the middle of the road.
    Mina’s tummy churned. It wasn’t hunger—she’d
grabbed a hotdog less than an hour ago—it was something else. The mysterious
object, just ten feet away from her, had killed people. It was dangerous. She’d
been so intent on getting to Oxford Street, that she’d not stopped to consider
the peril she was placing herself in. Had the stone been tested for
radioactivity, toxicity? Was she in danger just by being close to it? The dozen
scientists surrounding the thing did little to assuage her fears.
    A tug at her arm pulled her away from her fears.
It was David. “Get snapping, girl.”
    “Yes, right.” Mina raised her camera and started
snapping away, altering and fine-tuning her settings as she went. It was
difficult to know how the best photograph would look until she examined the
digital reel on her laptop, so she followed the photojournalist’s credo and
just kept on snapping. The more pictures she took, the better the chances of getting
something valuable. Different angles, different settings, different lenses, but
just keep snapping.
    David interviewed the police officers, scribbling away
furiously on his notepad while they spoke. Usually he would use a tape
recorder, but police officers were notoriously shy around recording equipment,
and they gave much more away when faced with a simple pencil and pad.
    While Mina tried to do her job, a pushy
photographer from The Chronicle fought with her for the best angles,
hustling her out of the way so often that it almost felt malicious. Mina knew
she should hustle the older woman right back, but it wasn’t something she was
used to. The other woman carried herself with such confidence and authority
that it was hard to resist her. The police officers all smiled and chatted with
her, while they had only disapproving glances for Mina. She started to wonder
if she would ever find her feet in this job.
    Satisfied that she had got as much as she was
going to get, Mina placed her spare lenses back into her hip bag and let her
camera hang around her neck. Now that she no longer stared through a
viewfinder, the black stone in the centre of the cordon seemed to be alive—less
a detached photographic subject, and more an imposing presence that demanded
attention. From six feet away, she could see that the surface of it was not jet
black,