Necropolis

impossible.
    Nor was there anyone left to send out the signals. Hong Kong Observatory had been abandoned. Many of the scientists had left. The others were too scared to come to work as the city continued its descent into sickness and death.
    Unseen, the dragon rushed toward them. The sky-scrapers were already in its sight. Suddenly they seemed tiny and insubstantial as, with a great roar, it fell on them. By the time anyone realized what was happening, it was already far too late.

    ***
    SIGNAL TWO
    The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was wondering how many people had died in the last twenty-four hours and how many more would die in the next. He could imagine them, sixty-six floors below, crawling over the sidewalks, begging for help that would never come, finally losing consciousness in a cloud of misery and pain. He himself would leave Hong Kong very soon. His work here was almost finished. It was time to claim his reward.
    The Old Ones were going to give him the whole of Asia to rule over in recognition of what he had achieved. Even Genghis Khan hadn't been as powerful as that. He would live in a palace, an old-fashioned one with deep, marble baths and banquet rooms and gardens a mile long. The world leaders who survived would bow in front of him, and anyone who had ever offended him, in business or in private life, would die in ingenious ways that he had already designed. He would open a theatre of blood and they would star in it. Anything he wanted, he would have. The thought of it made his head spin.
    He was behind his desk in his office on the executive floor of The Nail, and he was not alone. There was a man sitting on the same leather sofa that Scarlett Adams had occupied just a week before. The man had traveled a very long way, and he was still looking crumpled from his flight. He was elderly, dressed in a shabby, brown suit that didn't quite fit him. It was the right size, but it hung awkwardly. The man was bald, with white eyebrows and two small tufts of white hair around his ears. He looked ill at ease in this impressive office. He was out of place, and he knew it. But he was glad to be here. It had been a journey he had been determined to make.
    His name was Gregor Malenkov. For many years he had been known as Father Gregory, but he planned to put that behind him now. He had left the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy for good. He too had come for his reward.
    "So how do you like Hong Kong?" the chairman asked.
    "It's an extraordinary city," Father Gregory rasped. "Quite extraordinary. I came here as a young man, but it was much smaller then. Half the buildings weren't here, and the airport was in a different place.
    All these lights! All the traffic and the noise! I have to say, I hardly recognized it."
    "A week from now, it will be completely unrecognizable," the chairman said. "It will have become a necropolis. I'm sure you will understand what that means, a man of your learning."
    "A city of the dead."
    "Exactly. The entire population has begun to die. In just a matter of days, there will be no one left. The corpses are already piling up in the street. The hospitals are full — not that they would be of any use as the doctors and the nurses are dying too. Nobody even bothers to call the cemeteries. There's no room there. And soon things will get much, much worse. It will be interesting to watch."
    "How are you killing them?" Father Gregory asked. "Would I be right in thinking it is something to do with the pollution?"
    'You would be entirely correct, Father Gregory. Although perhaps I should not call you that, as I understand you are no longer in holy orders." The chairman stood up and went over to the window, but the view was almost completely obliterated by the mist that swirled around the building, chasing its own tail. There was going to be a storm. He could just make out the water down in the harbor. The water was choppy, rising into angry waves.

    "There has always been pollution, blowing in from China," he continued. "And the strange thing is that the people here have tolerated it. Coal-fired power stations. Car exhausts. They have always accepted that it's a price that has to be paid for the comforts of modern life."
    "And you have made it worse?"
    "The Old Ones have added a few extra chemicals — some very poisonous ones — to the mix. You've seen the results. The elderly and the weak have been the first to go, but the rest of the city will follow if they are exposed to it for very