She watched his great, heavy boots walking across the room; saw the rifle drop down and the barrel begin to scratch against the floor as it was slowly pushed under the bed. She closed her eyes, allowing the con of the darkness to make her feel she were even further away. Slowly she held her breath. The barrel rubbed at the ground and began to probe the space around her.
The spider was under her upper arm, feeling its way to her armpit and then it was up to her shoulder, then her neck, scuttling out from under her clothes and climbing on to her chin. The legs seemed to swamp her and she imagined how it looked, how big its jet-black body would be, how freakishly long those legs were. She could sense one touch her lips, as it felt its way forward across its foreign terrain, and then in one quick, jerky movement the spider was sitting across her mouth, the legs stretching from chin to nostril.
The barrel skimmed in front of her and brushed her trousers, lightly enough for her to feel and he to ignore. He gave the rifle a long shove and the barrel hit the wall just above her waist. He moved it along and did the same again, this time connecting with the wall just above her ribs. She could hear a small creak of joints and knew he was starting to crouch down so as to look under the bed. She could feel her held breath ready to escape, wondered if the spider would move away or fall into her mouth when she finally gasped, and as the thought occurred to her she found herself opening her eyes, ready to meet the piercing blue of his own, deciding that if he were to take her he would first have to see the hatred she felt, and not the fear.
A gunshot suddenly sounded above them, the echo pulsing through the corridor, and then Maddox was back on his feet instantly, the same creaking joints giving small, angry snaps. She pulled her eyes open in time to see his boots pounding across the floor and turning out sharply into the corridor. One small wisp of smoke slowly breaking in the space where he had just been.
The spider scuttled quickly from her mouth, moved across a cheek and found a path to a new home on the cold wall of the room.
3
The blast of the pistol exploded at the right side of Sullivan’s head and the sound blew through him, the heat scorching his ear and some of his hair. He had jerked to the side as he lunged forward, his eyes closing and his hands reaching out for Kendrick, scrabbling for the pistol, never believing he would reach it, the action no more than a token last stand, a refusal to bow to a bastard’s desire. They fell together in a clumsy cuddle, toppling against the shelves. The pistol fired again, this time into the ceiling, and the shot was flat and hollow, coming to Sullivan like a cannon fired underwater. Everything was muffled, shorn of its edges. He gave a moment to tell himself that he was deaf, shouting the conclusion into his numbed mind before regaining his position and his hold on the enemy.
He reached down to one of the framed photos, Schaeffer and his wife, and smashed it across Kendrick’s face, shattering the glass. He jumped on to him as the pistol fell to the floor amongst the debris of books and papers, and shoved him back into the bookshelves. Kendrick’s hands were at Sullivan’s face, fingers pressing into his cheeks as his thumbs searched out and squeezed down into his eyes. Again Sullivan pushed him back, then again, then once more and three bookshelves broke to the pressure showering them in a dusty paper cloud. Sullivan brought a knee up between Kendrick’s legs as he pulled his head away from his grip and the two men closed around each other, falling to the floor.
Kendrick was raining wild, scattershot thumps to his body as Sullivan let his right hand scrabble blindly to his side, rummaging through the mess looking for the pistol. His left hand went up to Kendrick’s throat and tried to find purchase, tried to squeeze and force him back but still Kendrick came at him, the small and neat fists making contact with Sullivan’s nose and chin and one clean swipe landing at the right side of his head, making the pain rage again.
Sullivan’s right hand pushed fingers through glass shards, over bent folders and torn paper, sweeping around in a wide arc, brushing aside all that it found. He tilted to his side to try and cast an eye to the floor, letting Kendrick take his rage out across the left side of his body. He felt a rib blaze under a blow, his arm sting as an old wound was opened and then finally, as Kendrick swung a fist across his left cheek, and Sullivan’s pained right hand side thudded into the floor, he saw it; the pistol was there, just in front of his searching fingers. He jerked for it, summoning all the energy he had left, his body tipping Kendrick back, knocking him off balance. His fingers were on the pistol butt, clamping around it, dragging it closer. He felt Kendrick turn around, his body weight shifting, lifting, and he knew that finally he had seen it too. Kendrick lunged, his red raw fists giving out to childish, grabbing hands and greedy interfering fingers, but he was too slow. The pistol was already in Sullivan’s hand.
The pistol jerked up, hard and fast, and it struck Kendrick plum across the nose. Sullivan swung his hand back and then brought the pistol to Kendrick’s face again, this time reopening the cut along his cheek. He writhed and wriggled under him and then finally Sullivan was free of his hold, and getting to his feet, a hundred old pains reprimanding him, trying to make him stop. The pistol, a lead weight in his hand, was turning to its target on instinct, free of thought or consideration. It was aimed at Kendrick before he even realised.
‘You bastard, Sullivan! You’ve cut my face!’ Kendrick spat the words as he sunk to the ground, flopping against the desk.
Sullivan felt the rage coursing through him, could feel the thrill of the situation and in one blessedly brief glimpse he saw himself feeding a bullet through Kendrick’s skull and watching in wonderment at the blood explosion that would blast from the back of his head. It went as soon as it came and it left only the sharp taste of revulsion. He stared back over the pistol in a stupefied grip of horror, slowly shaking his head at what he saw before him and what he could see he was close to becoming. He let the weight in his hand drop and edged back to the doorway.
‘Well go on then! Do it, Sullivan! Pull the trigger. Or could it be you can’t?’ Sullivan merely shook his head again and lowered the pistol to his side.
‘You did it once, do it again. What’s the matter, Sullivan? Lost the taste?’
‘You’re not worth it. Nothing is worth it.’
‘A noble man? I should have you framed.’
Sullivan paused in the doorway and his gaze fell fleetingly to the floor, to the point where Kendrick had motioned just a short time ago. A shiver passed through him, a cold energy, and then he was turning in the doorway, offering Kendrick a final, almost apologetic look and then running from the room.
‘You sanctimonious wretch!’ Kendrick bellowed after him. ‘There are no prizes for being the better man. No one cares Sullivan. Compassion isn’t a competition any more!’
‘Kendrick? You there? I heard gunshots.’
Kendrick looked around the office, momentarily perplexed, convinced he was hearing things.
‘Kendrick? Come in!’
He recognised Maddox’s voice and looked to the doorway, half expecting to see the brute standing there swinging his rifle. It was only after Maddox’s third attempt to rouse him that he remembered the walkie-talkie and shoved a hand into his jacket to retrieve it.
‘Kendrick? What the hell’s going on? I heard shots. Come in!’
Kendrick took up the small unit but paused with it at his lips, his thumb stroking the button whilst his mind worked over the situation.
‘Maddox?’
‘What’s going on? Talk to me!’ Maddox shouted back.
There was an emotional resonance to Kendrick’s words, betraying the blank look of an unwavering decision that was painted across his face.
‘Oh, Maddox. The most horrible thing…Davenport, my dear friend…Sullivan has shot him. Took my pistol and shot him dead. Find him, Maddox. Find them both. Sullivan and the girl. They must be stopped.’
‘Permanently?
‘They have betrayed the Party. Both of them. This cannot stand. Yes. Permanently, Maddox. Kill
them. Kill them both.’
4
Sullivan staggered along the corridors, one hand running along the jet-black walls as the other played in his scorched ear, waggling the index finger as if trying to dislodge a ball of wax. The silence in the ear seemed to pulse, it was a thick and gloopy nothingness trying to push deeper into his head, an alien life that wanted to birth. He could hear little more than tinny clanks and sighs; he was submerged in an invisible pool, unable to break a surface that seemed intent on swimming away from him at every push forward.
There were vibrations in the wall; short, frantic shivers as if a huge vehicle was passing it on the other side. The floor too was not still, it seemed to shift from under him, like it were loose carpet and he were barefoot. He wanted to give in, to drop to his knees and hold his hands up, and to succumb to the prison and his jailers once more. Too tired to run, too broken to care. Yet something pushed him on.
I love you Daddy…
She was still within him, somewhere. He knew it. Could feel it. Yet as he tried to wallow in the perfection of her image it was Mia that he saw. It was her that he heard and could feel tugging at his arm. He couldn’t leave her here, he had to protect her and not allow her to fall to the intentions of posturing, evil men. He didn’t want to care, couldn’t afford concern, but she wouldn’t leave him, wouldn’t give him peace.
He ran down a corridor he was sure he had just been down and turned a corner that led him back on himself. He felt certain that at any moment he would see himself up ahead.
‘I saw this thing on the TV daddy, men had rats in a maze, they would tease them with food to go through certain gates in the maze, tricking them, they would make them enter this cage. They were doing it for research, what were they researching? I knew rats were clever, why didn’t they? Then another man…it was horrible…’ She cried into my shoulder then, soft and gentle hands closing to fists. ‘They were putting things into the rats’ eyes. Blinding them, they said. They made them stumble around in that maze without their eyesight. Then another man…’
‘It’s not real, darling. It’s all make believe.’ She hadn’t bought that lie. She was clued up. Intelligent. She’d go far.
There was another way out, that was what she had told him, his daughter – no, not her, the other one. Mia? She had said there was another way out of this nightmare. A door, it was a door to another world. No. Don’t be stupid. A hatch. It was a hatch in a turret. Was it called a turret? How the fuck should I know?
He started searching the ceiling, looking for anything that seemed like a door, a hole, or an exit. That was where she would be. If he found that then he would find her. He would get her out, save her from this place and these people, and everything would be okay again. They could live out their time in blessed memories and willing delusions. Somewhere a sun was shining.
Coldness belched through the empty space in front of him and suddenly he found he couldn’t move. Not a finger, nor an eyelid; he was frozen to the spot whilst a great, piercing energy passed him. He could see images at his eyes, coming through them and forming in his mind; faces, and bodies, small and large, young and old, each seemingly tethered to each other as if the shapes were but one and it was a morphing, shifting, creation of his imagination. Yet his imagination was dry, and parched. He felt only the burning embers of his dream. He saw only her. Them. Thought only of his survival and her escape. What he saw was not real, and yet because of that knowledge, what he saw was twice as vivid.
The coldness became an impossible calmness, both soothing and achingly beautiful. He welcomed it and offered himself to it. For brief, tantalising moments he felt both young and free again, suddenly imbued with an ethereal brightness that was as magnificent as it was out of place. Light had penetrated the dark maze, lit him from within, bouncing and reflecting off his bent and broken edges, and illuminating that which he had closed off, showing him the way around the dead ends.
‘Leave,’ he told himself.
His response to his own demand was a face drifting through his vision, yellowed and rotten, a summer moon reflected in a dark, bottomless winter puddle. It passed through his eyes, and became the space ahead of him.
Mia’s scream came as if cued up ready for him, and then he was moving off, finding strength in his legs and direction in his mind, and as he ran through the shadows, under the darkness, he felt it turning to him, watching him and judging, waiting to see what he did.
5
Mia tied the second holding strap to the hatch handle and wrapped the slack around her hand, tugging it lightly twice and feeling its strength. She seemed pleased, encouraged. The makeshift stand wobbled beneath her trainers as she shifted herself around to get a better position. She waited, gathered her breath, and focused on the strap and the small, circular handle. It looked so weak and pointless, an afterthought of design. Her hand was bigger than it, almost swallowed it up when she touched it, yet despite its appearance it held strong and firm, keeping the large metal door in place in the ceiling with an unwavering stubbornness.
She began to tug at the strap, waited to feel the reassuring grip around the metal; little tugs at first but gradually increasing in strength as she worked herself into the task at hand. She gently rocked back and forth on the stand as she forged a rhythm like a small piston, sucking in a lungful of air before squeezing it out sharply between gritted teeth.
There was no give at the handle, the hatch remained firmly locked. White paint flecked from it and dropped to the floor, some fell into her hair, some on to her face. She moved more quickly, gave more, pulled harder. Nothing. Her eyes watered with the effort, her chest bore a stitch and her fingers began to throb, the knuckles growing out like eight new pimples. She suddenly felt stupid, embarrassed, like she had been deceived and shamed, but still she wouldn’t quit or slow her efforts. Beneath her the bedside table creaked under the strain as the wood bore a thin, sliver of a crack. She paid no heed, refused to hear it or allow it.
Mia pulled her body down, swung it to the left and then the right, each time pulling on the strap as she moved. Sweat had broken on her forehead, zigzagging its inevitable pathway to her already stinging eyes. A muscle strained in her shoulder, another in her back, but she was oblivious to it all, unable to acknowledge anything but the handle and the hatch. She imagined she could smell the air up above; she longed to feel the snow flecking her face again, to taste it on her tongue. Even that old tent, her home for so many numberless days, seemed warm and welcoming. She would get to the valley this time, and then she wouldn’t stop walking. There would be somewhere safe out there, and she would find it. At that thought, that certainty, she pulled down with everything she had, and finally, unmistakably, there was give at the handle. It came with a squeak like a large mouse and was followed by another shower of white paint and from somewhere in the back of her throat, a satisfied gurgle of triumph.
Her hands jumped for the handle, the fingers wrapping around the metal, and then she was turning it, slowly at first, like a rusty tap handle, but the further it turned the easier it became. Her eyes lit up with an unbearable happiness, her heart bloomed, pushing out the stitch, pushing back the feeling of despair, and then within seconds the handle was spinning between her hands and she was laughing and the laugh was joyous and full.
When finally the hatch yawned to its release, it was so sudden, the change in pressure at her hands so extreme, that she lost her balance on the stand and tumbled to the ground, landing with a thud and a yelp on her backside as the bedside table sheared in two at her feet. Still she was laughing. Looking up at the bottom of the long, silver tube stretching through the building to its other hatch at the roof, she acted as if it were the funniest thing she had ever seen.
She was still laughing as Turtle appeared, standing over her. At first she didn’t seem to see him, he was another warped and grotesque shadow, a figment of her imagination, and even as he spoke and bent down to her with an outstretched hand, none of it felt real to her.
&nb
sp; ‘Mia? Are you okay?’ He grabbed a slender wrist and began to lift her, his eyes moving from her to the base of the turret just above. ‘You were right. You said.’
He looked different. She couldn’t place it. She could feel the shaking in his hand as he hauled her to her feet, but it was more than that; it wasn’t any outward display, more something that he had lost. She could smell the traces of soap on his skin, the delicate perfume, and it seemed ridiculous. He continued his greedy gaze up at the turret and she saw the light of hope in his eyes and at once she knew whose screams she had heard.
He snatched up the chair and turned the legs back to the floor, instantly he was standing on it and grabbing for the base of the ladder that ran up the left hand side of the shaft. He was too short for it, shorter even than Mia, stubby fingertips just scratching at the bottom rung, tickling the metal.
‘Help me up, I’ll go first,’ Mia said, feeling somewhat affronted by the unfolding situation, as if Turtle had queue jumped her. It was a feeling out of synch with the circumstance but she couldn’t deny it, nor could she stop the urge she had to laugh again at the sight of his short and eager little arms flailing around above him in a hopeless fumble.
‘No, no I need to go first…these hatches, they are tough to open…’
No shit chef. Thank God, I’ve got all these men around to help me.
His eagerness had nothing to do with the hatch, nor anything to do with chivalry or Mia’s safety, she knew it, and let him have it. It was impossible not to see the truth in his face, and she wondered what he had seen, what he had sensed. At that consideration she turned to the corridor, looking left and then right, staring deep into the gloom, suddenly expecting to see something there. Somehow the calm that seemed to have settled, the complete emptiness of it all, was more ominous and felt more of a threat. Mia knew they were being watched. In her mind she could see the eyes, and they were unblinking and angry, and worse than that they were patient, because they were no longer human. Their watcher had time, never-ending time.
Bleeker Hill Page 22
