Almost instantly Sullivan felt dizzy; the room tilted and fell back out of step with what he had seen before. Those lethal words repeated in an echo, each louder than the time before, and they infested him. Davenport was floating over him, beaming down through the cut of light and trying to straighten the old lag’s body by resting those clean hands at his shoulder. His wife’s face came to him, her smell washed over him, her hands, her arms, their touch was against his skin, pressing hard and trying to hold on. Then she went again, back to where she hid, back to the safe part of Sullivan that no one could ever find. His eyes lifted to those of Davenport and they asked the question better than he could ever have spoken it.
‘She worked for me. In the last weeks, before…before we had to take flight…you don’t even know what’s happened to the country do you, Mr Sullivan?’
‘It’s gone funny.’
‘Funny?’
‘Even before I went down things had… your predecessor…’
‘Yes. Dreadful man.’
‘There were riots and everything went nuts…I remember that. That government, that joke of a party that we all created, they broke apart and got ousted. There was anarchy on the streets. No law. No recourse. By the time you and yours got into power, people had fallen too far to care. The country had broken and you were too late to fix it. People didn’t want it fixing.’ Sullivan shifted in his chair, his eyes never leaving Davenport’s wandering own. ‘My wife wrote me letters…’ he could feel the tears again, those wretched bloody tears, but he held them back, he was on a roll now, the questions and the memories, everything tumbling up through him and spitting out in quick garbled words. ‘Someone edited her letters. Why would they do that? Why take her words? They stopped allowing visitors there before long, so why take people’s words too? Haven’t you people already taken enough? You people took everything we had that mattered in that place. Fuck freedom, that prison took our purpose. It took my heart!’
‘Well, you were paying your debt to society, Mr Sullivan. You had to be punished.’
Sullivan knew Davenport wasn’t really listening, that he had nothing but cue card responses to give him, but he blundered on regardless, Davenport had reached in and opened him up, Davenport would just have to deal with it.
‘I don’t care what’s happened to the country, I never did, what does it matter to me that things have folded and people are killing each other? Why should I care about you and the Party? You want to try and rule this mess of a country, you go ahead and try, but I just don’t care anymore. My wife and my daughter, they are my country, my whole world. You know what? Once they stopped letting people into Thinwater, once they closed the doors, if I had known that was how it would stay, that that was as good as it was going to get, then the Wash may as well have had me. They may as well have fucking had everything left.’
‘I know it’s hard to believe, and I know you won’t want to understand, but you must take my word for it, you were in the best place, Mr Sullivan. The things that have gone on…’
‘You will forgive me if I don’t agree?’
‘Sure, yes, okay, it sounded a touch cheap when I said it. But there is truth in it. Believe me. There is so much left for the Party to do to get this country back. There has been so much bloodshed, Sullivan. We’ve all seen too much, far too much that no one would wish to see. We are trying, we really are. The Party are trying to start again because we care about our country. We care about our people. We believe in civilization. There has to be something left when all this madness passes. There simply has to be. There has to be answers. There has to be a future.’
‘You mean the Wash? Did that not give you the answer you wanted? Did that not create the people you needed?’
‘Not a practice I ever subscribed to. Not the Party’s finest hour. We are an ever-evolving beast, Sullivan and so mistakes will be made on the path to the right answer. When we took power there was anarchy on the streets, pure anarchy, like you said, it was a crazy time. Madness. We had to find our way, we had to try and get a grip with what was happening and retain some semblance of order. We had to forge a path for rebuilding the country. Though I may not agree with what went on, I can understand how my predecessor was sold on it. The Wash was a desperate measure because we were living in desperate times. When I took charge I outlawed it immediately. There were still some that advocated it and it went on for a while, I know, against my orders, but he…he is a very persuasive man. You have heard of Ellis Schaeffer, of course?’
‘Who?’
‘You haven’t heard of him?’
‘No.’
Davenport squinted, his expression one of doubt, he looked to be scrutinising, disbelieving, staring into Sullivan for a truth that wasn’t there.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. Why, what did I miss?’
Bergan looked around momentarily, first to Sullivan, then to Davenport and then back to the window and the walkie-talkie in his hand. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing Frank. Think you called it wrong,’ Maddox’s tinny walkie-talkie voice replied. ‘This place is dead.’
‘Keep looking.’
Davenport was smiling back at Sullivan. A smile in itself, a sign of enjoyment in these awful surroundings, was suspicious enough, but Davenport wore something inhuman in that grin and Sullivan hated it. Hated him. ‘Schaeffer was the instigator of the Wash. A madman, some say. A scientist. He believed he could cure our country’s ills and make us human again. He convinced others that he could wipe people’s pasts and leave them open to a new future.’
‘Steal their memories, you mean?’
Davenport shrugged and smiled again. ‘I’m not a man of science. I can’t pretend to understand how it all works. I just saw what it did. “Empty vessels” he would call them. But these people were of no use to man nor beast. He had damaged them beyond anything humanity could save. Who knows, perhaps he could have achieved what he claimed in time, but I couldn’t allow what he was doing to play out to proof. You kill a hundred, five hundred, and maybe you find the answer, or maybe you are just a mass murderer. I couldn’t allow it to continue. You had friends taken for the Wash?’
‘I don’t have friends. Where’s my wife?’
Davenport let a long and weary breath creep out of him, and slid the whisky glass on to the table. ‘She worked as a secretary for the Party. She was a good woman, a fine person. She talked of you often and with such love. I know she only applied for the job so she could have time with me, time to talk about you, to argue your case, plead your release. She loved you very much.’
‘Loved?’
‘With all that’s happened…’
‘My wife is not dead, Mr Davenport. I know she isn’t.’
‘The simple truth is, I can’t say either way. My offices were destroyed, people died there. Good people. You understand? I have no way of knowing whether she was there at the time. She made me promise to search you out. She asked me to find you and make you safe. To make sure you didn’t die in that prison. You wonder why Hudson was so attentive, why he kept you from the Wash and the riots, the murder and the mayhem? It was because of your wife Sullivan, and the debt I felt I owed her. It was our friendship. Such a thing can still exist, even in times like these. I find optimism in that. I find hope. Maybe you do too? I only wish we could have got to you sooner. So you ask me why you are here, that is all I can give you. Is that enough?’
Sullivan sat there soaking it all in and as he did, as the pretty picture of his wife, that timeless photo he kept locked away for safe keeping developed in his mind, he broke into deep, uncontrollable tears, and this time he made no pretence, and no effort to stop. The emptiness that had consumed him since arrival at the TV studios was now total and complete, and he felt as if he were floating through space, with nothing to see and nowhere to land.
‘We have been moving around for months, from one hideout to another,’ Davenport continued, slipping off the table and turning away from Sullivan’s
tears. ‘We were a great many more at the start, friends, family and colleagues. The Party have pockets of people throughout the country, but for now we must remain apart. We must stay alive until it is safe for us again.’ Davenport trailed off, distracted by the heavy footsteps on the roof, growing stronger, walking faster. He looked to the map on the wall and then back into the room. ‘We continue to head west now. We have a secure place, a safe house. Probably the only place left now that is. The Party worked on it for many months. As soon as things started to break, they started to build…’
A second set of footsteps began charging up the staircase outside the office. Bergan was leaning from the window, bellowing into the walkie-talkie. ‘What’s happening up there? What do you see? Talk to me!’
‘It was decided that it would be where we started again. Where we would start to rebuild. Its purpose was corrupted by the Wash, by Schaeffer, but we will save this country from itself, Sullivan. We will be victorious over this madness. I sent a point team ahead…’
‘We are at war then?’ Sullivan yanked himself from his chair and wiped his face with a sleeve, his words quiet and broken, but forceful enough to break into Davenport’s’ well-rehearsed speech. ‘We really are at war?’
‘Yes. Yes, Sullivan. We are.’
‘With whom?’
‘With each other dear man, with each other.’
There was a thud on the roof, and then a bang on the door, and then a bullet – the first of hundreds that were to be fired at them over the next quarter of an hour – broke through the windowframe just above Bergan’s left shoulder and embedded itself into the far wall. In all the ensuing confusion and panic, past the gunfire and the screaming, the one thing that would stay with Sullivan as clear as day was the sight of a bullet hole in the map on the wall. He saw it as he fell and the image seemed to imprint itself on his mind. The small dark hole was neatly centred in the middle of the recently drawn black circle, and just above it, flecked with blood, and scorched with heat, were the bold letters on the map spelling out the name BLEEKER HILL.
Air
1
They poured from the warehouse in droves, wave after wave of small black shapes; ants breaking out of that rotten old chocolate cake at the end of the road. They came out of windows and through the damaged roof, from the doors and across the empty grounds, swarming together into one congested blur, moving forward towards the TV studio. Some had guns, most sticks and clubs and other makeshift weaponry. Some screamed, raw, primeval wails, whilst others just charged forward, heads bowed in an ominous, threatening silence. A group broke away looking for other ways in, but the main mass just ploughed on, rolled through the deserted road and towards the fence that would not hold them.
Bergan was out of Davenport’s office in a flash, barging into Kendrick and Kleinman on the other side of the door, and then shots came again and Kleinman was hit in the back, the blast spinning him around on the spot and throwing him roughly against Bergan, pushing him into the wall and then down to the ground. Baxter was running up the stairwell toward them, Turtle puffing away behind him. What was left of the window in the office fell inwards and the foundations shook as half the wall came away with it and the room was peeled open across one whole side. Sullivan was knocked backwards on to the floor, falling arse-over-head and landing with a heavy thud on his front. Hands were on him in a flash, clean and beautiful hands, and as he looked up he saw Davenport had him in a tight hug and was dragging him toward the door. Kendrick was behind him, leading him out, one hand at the collar of Davenport’s suit jacket.
‘Burn the map! Burn the damn map!’ Kendrick was yelling as he crawled, pulled and guided them to the door.
Baxter dived across them into the room, rolling over and stopping on his haunches. Turtle was darting down to his knees, skidding across the office floor and then coming to a stop next to Kleinman. They tipped the giant oak table on to its side, ducked behind it and pulled the screaming Kleinman to them just as more bullets tore into the room through the gaping hole, tearing into the flesh of the walls and across the exposed lip of the table. Bergan scrabbled across the floor and ducked through the door, narrowly avoiding being struck as it sheared off its hinges and landed at the feet of the retreating Davenport, Kendrick and Sullivan. Bergan waved them on, hunkered down and craned back into the room at his trapped men, his corpse eyes alive, searching for a way out.
Above them footsteps pounded across the roof and angry blasts of machine gun fire cut though the sky to the ground below. Maddox was easily heard through the broken wall screaming abuse to unseen people, the horrid joy in his voice every bit as vicious as the explosion of fire from his weapon. The ceiling started to crumble, dropping bits of plasterboard to the floor like oversized confetti, and as Maddox’s footsteps came again, a second torrent of gunfire blasted down from the roof making the room rock, the roof buckle and Maddox even more excited.
‘Baxter?’ Bergan was half in the doorway, half out, pistol raised high, rigid in his grip. ‘Can you get Kleinman out?’
‘Have to drag him by the feet, I dunno Frank. How exposed are we?’
Bergan looked to where the far wall used to be and where now just a broken, jagged hole stood, beckoning the world in, and slowly shook his head.
‘Turtle? You hit?’
‘I’m okay, Frank.’
‘We don’t have much time. We need to move.’
Another wave of gunfire hit the room and broke into the side of the wall above where Bergan was crouched and he flinched to the side, dropping flat to the floor. The table, that fragile shield, suddenly broke down the middle as if sliced in two by an invisible chainsaw and a bullet ripped through Kleinman’s right shoulder sending a jet of blood across Baxter’s forest of facial hair and another childish scream from Kleinman’s mouth as his shoulder bone snapped and broke through his skin. He started to jig and spasm in Baxter’s grip, the one hand strong enough to move slapping at Baxter’s beard in limp desperation.
‘Frankie, we have to get him out of here! I have to try.’
‘Wait!’ Bergan bellowed into the floor as the gunfire from above started again and Maddox’s whooping and name-calling reached a pitch of hysterics.
‘Frankie! We have to move him!’ Baxter shouted back, Kleinman’s hand probing and pulling at his mouth and hair. ‘Shield me!’
‘Wait!’
Baxter was up into a crouch and grabbing at Kleinman’s ankles. Almost instantly a bullet chipped off the corner of the table and entered Baxter just above his heart sending him flying back across the room and into the empty doorway where he struck the frayed border and spun around, his back to the room and the next blast of gunfire. A second and third bullet entered the back of his skull and he dropped like a lead weight in front of Bergan. As if for a final flourish, a terrible curtain call, the following wave of gunfire brought the roof in; the cheap ceiling spewing its contents on to the heads of those in the office as if pulled inside out by a giant’s hand. With it came Maddox who landed just in front of the table with a mighty thud, a large submachine gun following him down and finding its way into his grip before anyone even had a chance to blink. He rolled over on to his side, arched the machine gun up over the broken wall and then, preceded by a defiant scream, unleashed the remaining bullets down on to the massed enemy below.
Bergan bounded back into the room and grabbed Kleinman’s ankles, pulling him, yanking him, unceremoniously to the doorway. Turtle crawled along behind, trying to support Kleinman’s head, pushing past Baxter like he were just another part of the furniture, not affording him a look, knowing not to allow it. As they turned into the stairwell, Bergan shouted back over his shoulder, struggling to make himself heard over the incessant gunfire. ‘Get the map! Maddox! Destroy the map!’
Bergan’s words remained unheard. By the time Maddox had fired empty and backed from the room, reloading and turning out into the stairwell, following the others down, it would have been too late anyway. The cold fury in Maddox’s b
rilliant, blue eyes was already sold on the next enemy.
2
Kendrick led Davenport and Sullivan to the ground floor, turning them into a long office lined corridor. Behind them the stairwell shook and shuddered as it echoed out the ferocious gunplay above. The three men hunkered down, tucking themselves into an office doorway momentarily as a rain of concrete and metal showered the corridor in front of them, spat through the throat of the stairwell, shattering in deathly loud blasts in front of them. Kendrick was the first up, tugging at Davenport’s arm, pulling him on. Davenport, in turn, was grabbing at Sullivan and doing the same. There were footsteps behind them, more loud thudding blasts, and as Sullivan chanced a look back he saw Maddox bouncing down the stairs towards them, three steps at a time, rifles slung over each shoulder, submachine gun under one arm and an impossibly fat cigar clamped into his mouth.
The offices around them suddenly began to take their turn; the steady wave of gunfire from outside the walls crashing into them, puncturing through them and punching out the windows, as each room they stumbled past was slowly dismantled, eaten alive and spat back out by the enveloping tide of bullets, a force that seemed to surround them, follow them and nibble at their heels, looking to chase them down and swallow them whole. Maddox began responding in kind, his huge bulk of a body swinging left and right as he strode the corridor, the machine gun blasting one way and then the other, his curled lips casually sucking deep on the cigar, savouring the taste whilst he savoured the violence.
Bleeker Hill Page 7
