Bleeker Hill

by Russell Mardell

  He had called it the chamber.

  This is where they stick their dead

  A light bloomed to her left, seemingly halfway up the wall, and slowly revealed itself to be the heart of a giant furnace – a big, charcoal black monstrosity taking up almost the whole wall – small flames jumped and jerked within it, gently etching the room in a cosy autumnal hue. Rags lay before it, bones inside. A pair of legs was dangling out of one corner, separated from a charred husk. Pipes ran from its bulk into the walls, up through the ceiling, blackened arteries from a diseased heart. The shapes around her were slowly painted in and given definition; hooks hanging from the walls, body bags draped over short struts of wood, and beneath her, as she had suspected, as she had known, the floor was stacked high and wide with corpses.

  Mia eased herself forward like she was sitting on the most fragile of glass. The mound shifted under her as shapes and lumps moved against her hands and tumbled down with her to the floor. High above the roar of the invaders came again. The noise was starting to build and this time it seemed to come from all sides. Gunshots. Screaming. Triumph and defeat. She was in a trap within a trap. A coffin within a tomb. She moved slowly down to the floor and regained her footing, standing against the rebellion in her legs and looking out across the room.

  Bodies were stacked on all sides, some wrapped in body bags, most just dumped uncaringly in a heap. She lifted the top of her fatigues and held it to her face as she wandered the room, past the furnace and the hanging bags, turning a full circle around what floor was on display, looking for another way out, yet knowing there was none. On the floor, underneath the hole, a ladder was snapped into several pieces, the wood chipped and splintered and drenched in blood. She could see faces in the flickering orange light, grotesque features gawping at her from the piles of bodies, watching her as she fumbled around hopelessly.

  She moved back to where she had landed and was instantly caught by a light from above – it was piercing and unnatural, strong and penetrating, and her hand left her face and shielded her eyes – she was suddenly bathed in a spotlight, a turn without anything to say or an act to perform. She ducked away from it and shot back across the room, moving in behind the lines of body bags, out of reach of its searching probe. She heard whispered voices, feet on the floor above, and then beyond both the steady thump of bullets. They were coming, breaking her trap. The light turned and suddenly went out and for a moment there was nothing beyond the alien clanking from the furnace, then the voices came again and were followed by two light thuds as something, someone, dropped through the hole.

  Mia drew down to a crouch and shuffled against the wall, peering out from under the low swinging body bags and across to the furnace. Two long shadows crested and then bent along the ceiling as footsteps crunched across the floor. The light came again, and this time it was coming from the room, sweeping around like a searchlight. She pulled herself flat to the floor and began to crawl under its beam. There was no space, and nowhere else to go; Mia moved to the nearest mound of bodies and pressed herself in. There was give instantly, several corpses sliding from the top and tumbling down in a horrible crunch to the ground, opening a greater space for her to shuffle in. At the sudden shift in position the top of the mound fell in on itself and Mia was quickly smothered; skeletal bodies and broken limbs caving in on her, and holding her where she lay. The trap had been sprung and she had nothing to do but wait for the kill.

  It wasn’t real, she heard her father saying. None of it is real. He sounded as if he meant it, and he would never lie to her. It’s not real, she repeated, interlocking her fingers and cupping her hands over her face, trying to shield what was left of her from the stench of what they wanted her to become. The footsteps came on again, muffled from where she hid, yet she could tell they were slow and purposeful, untroubled and in command. They would not turn away until they found what they were looking for. It’s not real. The footsteps stopped and she could feel them through the lifeless bodies piled over her. There was movement, voices, disgusted words, and then the light again, peeking in through the hideous jumble of death. They were moving through the mound, discarding what they found, getting closer to her.

  As the light flashed across her face, she felt something smother her, a cooling force that promised to shield her from everything and take control. It wrapped her, embraced her, and danced through her. She was far away. So very far away. She heard the sounds of the room and let them fade. She heard the rhythm of her heartbeat like it was the ticking of a giant clock and yet she knew it wasn’t. Then, finally she was staring up at a huge white light, as large and piercing as the moon always was in her dreams. She gazed through it and felt its beauty. Felt its hope.

  Epilogue

  Departure

  ‘I said the Party loves you, Mia.’

  ‘She’s out of it, chief.’

  ‘Mia?’

  ‘How’d you know her?’

  ‘She’s Lucas Hennessey’s kid. Get that damn light out her face.’

  The man to his left pulled the spotlight away and let it hang at the wall. His boss stepped forward towards the crumpled heap on the floor and sank to his knees.

  ‘Lucas Hennessey’s girl, eh? No shit,’ the man with the light said.

  Mia felt him touch her neck and feel for a pulse. She heard the gunfire above and around her. People were running back and forth in a controlled chaos. They were in a corridor that had not so long since been aflame and the walls were an impenetrable black. She liked the way the man’s hand felt, it was strong and secure, purposeful.

  ‘You want me to get her out of here, chief?’

  ‘No, go help the others. Clear this floor. Make sure the fires are out then get word to the top. I want a post set up before we lose the last of the day. And switch that damn light off!’

  He duly obliged and scuttled away with the spotlight.

  Mia saw the man leaning over her reach for a walkie-talkie clasped to his jacket. He spoke from the side of his mouth, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘We got a Party member alive down here. Gimme the status on the medics.’

  ‘We still got some stragglers in the woods, chief. Can’t risk the truck getting hit,’ a voice came back.

  ‘Tell him to prepare himself, I’m bringing her up to him.’

  ‘You got it, chief.’ Mia heard several popping sounds on the other end of the radio and then the other man was gone and the man above her was reaching under her body and lifting her up.

  ‘Hold on there, Mia. We’re going to get you looked after.’

  She felt like she was floating up on the air, drifting away, bobbing along. He held her strong and tight and yet she felt small. Her head was flopped to the side and each corridor came to her at a skewed angle. People filled the space in front of her. There were bodies on the floor, bodies moving through them. From time to time more shots came but they were few. There was a sharp taste of smoke in her throat and she could see the wisps of its trace on the air.

  ‘Get that damn fire out!’ the man bellowed at someone else.

  They moved up a staircase and then another and she started to taste something else beyond the smoke and as she did her heart leapt. It was air; clean and crisp and sharp. She could feel the dampness and the moisture and she tried to raise her head up and look for snow.

  ‘I know your father,’ the man suddenly said.

  Mia heard him plant a foot through the snow, heard the deep, reassuring crunch, delighted in it, then fell back into the blackness again.

  *

  The darkness was like velvet and Sullivan let it cradle him as he held his wife. They were sitting together staring out across a misty lake as their daughter ran up and down the bank with a long stick in front of her like it were a sword, swooshing it back and forth, scything through invisible enemies. They had been here so many times before over the years; first date, the proposal and also, yes, she had always claimed this was the place where their daughter had been conceived too. Sullivan had never been sur
e about that but liked the idea and hoped it were true. There’d be symmetry to it, were it true. Either way it was a magical place. It was their place; the lake, the lush grass and the trees – especially the giant old oak where they now sat – everything was theirs as far as the eye could see.

  She moved into him, her head against his heart and for the longest time they said nothing, yet said much. Too much probably. Sullivan watched his daughter against the misty glass of the lake’s surface, shining against it in her white dress, muddied and dirtied by one too many adventures. He felt his heart leap, just for a moment, and against it his wife shifted. She was looking up at their daughter too now, both of them sat there with stupid, beaming smiles and gawping, empty eyes. Their daughter stared back, questioning their look with a narrow gaze and then a roll of the eyes, the child’s rebuke of the stupid parent.

  Across the lake two lights shone through the mist, combing over the water, moving back and forth before going out.

  ‘Our place,’ his wife said and squeezed his hand, forcing their fingers together.

  ‘Our place,’ Sullivan replied.

  ‘Even in the dark…’ his wife said and then stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Even in the dark…it’s even beautiful in the dark.’

  The smooth, velvet hold grew tighter and Sullivan could only nod in response to her. Across from them the lights had come again and they silhouetted their daughter.

  ‘What are those lights, mummy?’ she asked, pointing the stick in their direction, moving it back and forth in time with them.

  Her mother merely shook her head and held a hand out to her, beckoning her over. Her daughter stood her ground.

  ‘Come on sweetheart,’ her mother said and tapped her watch.

  Sullivan stood and dusted himself down, brushing fallen leaves from his lap. He approached his daughter with his arms outstretched, despite the heaviness they carried, and went in for a hug. He felt her in his hold, that familiar weight, and delighted as her hair flopped over and tickled his skin. He could feel her breathing against him and could smell her most wondrous and perfect aroma again. Even as she passed by him, passed through him, and ran up to the great oak tree and the secure embrace of her mother, he could smell her. Feel her. Need her.

  Sullivan stood at the edge of the lake, the mist drifting out, gently wrapping around him, and stared off across the water and then up to the searching brilliance of the lights. Back and forth they went across the lake, slowing their movement, gradually becoming one. They didn’t break the darkness, they magnified it, and yet, as they found Sullivan and he gave himself over, the light broke him easily. It shattered the little man and plundered his big heart and then swept up every loose piece, and dragged them away.

  *

  The headlights of the medical truck clicked on and off in rapid succession, two yellowy beams breaking the forest gloom ahead and lighting the snow road before them. Mia was entranced, her eyes blinking in time to their coming and going. It was several minutes before she realised it was her that was making them do it. She stared down at her freshly bandaged hand and observed her fingers pulling back and forward on the lever. When she finally took her hand away she brought it up to her face and gazed at it as if seeing it for the first time.

  The noise from behind her, back down the hill, came intermittently – the familiar popping of gunfire, the detached shouting of threats and orders. She looked through the rear view mirror and watched the scene play out – strangers, all of them, playing their pointless game. Kings of a castle that could never be conquered. They would try, she mused, they had to try, it was what people did. But they would fail and they would fall.

  She thought of the nice man that had carried her out of that place and brought her, through the snow and the threat of gunfire, up the hill to the truck. How long would he be nice? How long could he hold that small goodness? Then there was the medic who had tended to her and regaled her with tales of her father and their time together in the Party. He had been good to her. She took no pleasure from what she had to do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the windscreen.

  Turning to the medic, sat there in the passenger seat, slumped against the bloody smear on the window, she repeated her apology but it sounded flat and false.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she told his lifeless body. ‘We shouldn’t be here.’

  Mia flicked the headlights on full and stared ahead into the forest, along the snowy road. A single balloon rolled across in front of them, carried by a small breeze. It turned and tumbled, bobbed up and then swept away into the trees where it popped against a sharp nub of branch. She eased her foot to the accelerator and the truck lurched forward. She fed it up a gear and moved on.

  *

  The light was piercing Sullivan’s eyes. He blinked rapidly and yanked his head away. He waited for the pain to flare once more but nothing came. He was numb. He rolled his head back to its original position and gently opened his eyes. A figure stood before him dressed in white, in his hand he was rolling a small torch between his fingers and scrutinising Sullivan’s face. He smiled lightly and raised his eyebrows. Sullivan tried to move his arms but couldn’t, he felt held, like an invisible force was pinning him down. It was only as he looked at his arms, and then his legs, also stationary and immovable, that he realised he was lying in a bed.

  ‘Try not to move too much. You need to try and keep still. Rest. That’s what you need. Good old-fashioned rest and recuperation. Does wonders for a man, no matter what…he has been through.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve tended to you as best we can. Sorted out that nasty wound on your arm and re-set your nose. Wasn’t easy, we’re missing one of our medical supply trucks, but we did what we could. Been through the wars haven’t you? Not to worry, you’re quite safe now.’

  Sullivan felt like he had been woken from a dream and he wanted desperately to fall asleep and try and catch it up again, but the more the man spoke, the more Sullivan took in of the room, the more awake he became.

  ‘Do you have a name? You’re a Party man I assume from the clothes. Good. That’s good.’ The man wandered to the side of Sullivan’s bed and took a seat on a gurney next to it. ‘Party looks after its people. It’s all okay now.’

  ‘I don’t…’ Sullivan paused mid word, his eyes widening around the scene before him. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, everything suddenly looked familiar. He jerked his head to the side and saw a small man in army fatigues wiping down a huge smear of blood from a wall. To the man’s side a body lay under an old and bloody dustsheet. ‘No!’ Sullivan suddenly wailed, ‘no! NO!’

  ‘Yes, you are one of the lucky ones. We arrived just in time. It was touch and go for a while but we brought you back.’

  The door in front of them opened and a man strolled in, bound up in an expensive suit and a neat hairdo. He smiled broadly at Sullivan and jutted a hand down to him.

  ‘He can’t shake your hand, sir,’ the man in white said, nodding to Sullivan’s bandaged arms and hands.

  ‘Oh, of course, silly me. How thoughtless. Do forgive me, won’t you?’ the expensively attired man said with a small laugh.

  ‘I should think the new Prime Minister could be forgiven anything, sir,’ the man in white said, returning his laugh with one of his own.

  ‘New to the job, you see?’ The Prime Minister said to Sullivan, with a casual shrug of the shoulders. ‘Haven’t yet learned who the victims are. Anyway, it’s good to see you back with us. What happened here? Can you remember? I guess it may take time. Not to worry. No, don’t worry about it. Don’t talk. Plenty of time for stories later.’

  Acknowledgements

  With huge thanks to the following for their support -

  David Baker, Tom Bromley, BubbleCow, Amit Dey, Ruby English, Gary James, Hilary Johnson, Angela & Arthur Millie, Graham Millie, Gary Smailes,

  Stew Taylor, Jeremy Thompson & all at Matador

  The Party loves them all
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  The story continues...

  DARKSHINES SEVEN

  (Bleeker Hill book 2)

  Now available as an ebook