Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  I knew what the look meant.

  See you later.

  ‘Let’s get you to your room for the night, and you’ll keep your tongue inside your head if you know what’s good for you,’ the same voice said from behind. I was tipped out of the chair to my feet, grabbed from behind and shoved towards the rear of the offices. I looked back at Coyle who was stooping to pick up the sweet wrapper he had thrown over his shoulder so nonchalantly earlier.

  See you later, I thought.

  ‘Riley, Mannion, Jay, help me escort him to the Trophy Room.’ I heard more footsteps behind me as I was marched out of a side door and into a narrower, gloomier corridor that ran deeper into the building. We passed three interview rooms, a couple of non-descript doors and staff facilities before stopping at the corridor’s end.

  Riley gave me a calculated stare before undoing my cuffs. I then removed my clothes as directed and dressed in a paper thin, plain yellow boiler suit. Riley grunted, satisfied and re-cuffed me. There were solid lockers there and my funeral clothes, belt, shoes, bow and belongings were placed on a tray then thrown into one of them. I signed for them on a small slip of paper, aware that I would not be seeing them again.

  They searched me thoroughly for anything deemed to be of danger to others or myself. When I had removed my shirt they saw the blood-soaked tape and offered me a fresh dressing and medical attention, both of which I declined.

  There were four of us in the narrow corridor, clearly they thought that more Mudheads, a show of force, would make any resistance from me less likely. Contrarily, it made them more vulnerable; in this confined space they would only serve to get in each other’s way, provide me with bigger targets. I thought of an old saying involving barrels of fish but could not bring it to mind.

  Riley swiped a magnetic stripped card through a card reader, a loud buzzer sounded and then I was dragged past the guard station and two electronically locked doors towards the holding cells. The corridor stretched away, with rooms either side, on a shiny over-buffed antiseptic floor that seemed to eat rather than reflect light. Our shoes chirped and squeaked as we went. We stopped outside Cell 3, Riley swiped his card again and Mannion opened the door. I did not need persuading inside, despite their misgivings. I complied with the Mudhead shoving me along until I was shown the open door.

  ‘Home,’ said one of the guards.

  ‘Keep his cuffs on,’ said another, and I was shoved into the cell.

  I slammed my shoulder into the upright of the top bunk to keep my feet, my balance wavering with my hands locked behind my back. I spun and felt the cut in my chest tug and open a little more. Then the door was slammed without any further litany or threat. There was nobody else in the cell with me, not that that made any kind of difference.

  I could hear muffled voices outside my room and saw the peephole darken, faces pressed to the other side of the door to get a better, fish eye view of me. I sat on the bottom bunk and leaned back on my tethered arms. I heard the Mudheads leave after a couple of minutes.

  I stood and moved my arms left and right, up and down, flexed my fingers and wrists. I had to keep the blood flowing. I took stock of the small room and noted it was an improvement on my last place of incarceration. Just. The small bucket in the corner had smatterings of dried faecal matter on its lid. The window was too high to see out of and the ceiling too high to reach. A harsh bulb shone, behind sturdy wire and fired bleak light into every corner of the room. The walls were painted a sickening light blue, the graffiti underneath only semi-obscured.

  It was a while before I found it, I saw the camera secreted away in a small, dark crack in the corner opposite the bed. The lens regarded me with indifference and I did my best to ignore it. I wondered if Coyle was on the other end of the connection, staring at my image, re-sheening his hair and plotting. I looked at the lens and waited for the day staff to leave.

  For the tables to turn.

  For the lights to go out.

  A man’s got to stand for something other than to piss.

  Old Nautical Saying

  CHAPTER 60

  ‘You struggling to sleep, Cap?’ Bronagh had found Beaugent near one of the aft engines. ‘It’s a little late to be up and checking propeller oil or anything else for that matter.’

  Beaugent twisted the oil cap back on and wiped a greasy hand down the front of his shirt. ‘Well, you’re up, checking on me.’

  Bronagh gave him a reproachful glare, like a schoolteacher not believing the version of events and asking the class miscreant for a more credible, honest account. Beaugent ignored him and dropped the oil container back into the fireproof hold.

  ‘You’ve got to look after these engines, Bronagh. Ain’t many left and spares are harder to come by than a windshark’s tooth.’

  Bronagh put his hands up in submission, choosing to overlook the implication that he may not have been doing his job with regular oil-checks, or that he did not know the value or rarity of the engines he so dutifully, lovingly maintained. He was fully aware that he was one of the best engineers in the sky and he knew that Beaugent knew that too.

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  ‘You pouring?’

  ‘There’s some cane rum needs finishing off.’

  ‘Be rude not to.’

  ‘You know what they say: pour rum, snores come.’ Bronagh climbed the rope ladder up to the main walkway and then down into the living quarters from there. Beaugent followed him, walked through the galley and watched as he took two wooden beakers from a store box and a bottle of rum from the drinks cabinet.

  ‘I hate these wooden beakers.’ Bronagh shuddered as he poured a double measure into each beaker.

  ‘It’s what’s in them that counts. Besides, glass doesn’t do too well up here.’

  Bronagh looked at Beaugent, then added another measure into the stubby, opaque receptacles.

  ‘There’s only a finger left in the bottle, B, pour it.’

  Bronagh upended the bottle and made a mock wringing gesture on the neck as if trying to squeeze out a last drop.

  ‘Take a sip straight away, Beaugent, it’s full.’

  ‘Sipping is for hummingbirds.’ He gulped half of his rum straight down. Bronagh did the same, and they both offered up a mild shudder to the God of undiluted liquor.

  ‘Thought it might get rid of the bad taste in your mouth, Chief.’

  ‘Take more than a hogshead of this stuff to do that.’

  ‘You angry because we’ve been cancelled for the return drop?’

  ‘Nah. I expected that. We can’t speak our minds, such as we did, and not lose the return leg. In fact, in retrospect, we were lucky that was all we lost.’

  ‘Still, a credit’s a credit.’

  ‘Yeah, and a bad taste is a bad taste.’

  ‘Especially when Loopes has cooked it.’

  Beaugent grunted, ‘Don’t sit right, is all. Shouldn’t have took this job in the first place.’ He looked out of the galley window, the view was thick with cloying rainclouds that drew shifting gauze veils across the glass. ‘Some things are more important than credits.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Beaugent. They drank a silent toast. Bronagh shuddered again. ‘There’s something more, though. And it runs deeper than the male urges and wants we don’t get met whilst we’re cloud bumping up here.’ Beaugent was staring out of the window again.

  Bronagh sat back in his chair with an exaggerated sigh. ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve moored proper, or I’ve moored proper, if you catch my meaning.’

  Beaugent continued as if Bronagh had not spoken, ‘I’m talking about honour, a code.’

  ‘But what we cart for business ain’t our business, you always say that. It’s one of our selling points.’

  ‘I believe it too,’ Beaugent emptied his beaker, ‘but something’s under my skin on this one, and it’s crawling around and chewing on my insides B, it feels like…’ Beaugent let the thought train derail, placed his beaker in t
he wooden wash bucket and turned to face Bronagh.

  ‘...like a storm’s brewing,’ finished Bronagh, who upended his drink and threw his beaker into the wooden bucket from where he sat. Wooden receptacles have their advantages.

  Beaugent turned and walked over to the portal, resting his head up against the thick glass. ‘I know. And I’m trying to work out if we should moor up until it passes or fly straight into the heart of it to see where it spits us out.’

  ‘Things will look better in the morning,’ said Bronagh, ‘cept old whores and new bruises, right?’

  Beaugent ignored him, the reflection of his frown was dark against the night sky. For a moment he looked like an apparition, a brow furrowed spirit, as malevolent and ill at rest as any haunted home, vessel or cloud.

  Bronagh walked over to a different porthole, half expecting a windshark to glissade slickly from the murky gloom, baring teeth and intent, or possibly a confluence of ominous clouds amassing, conspiring to displace the moon, portentous and potent.

  Above the building rain clouds, all Bronagh could see was a sky of limpid, empty, crystalline black. It seemed more foreboding than anything else he could have imagined.

  ‘Storm’s brewing,’ said Beaugent again. He muttered a ‘night’ then retreated to his quarters off the main deck.

  Bronagh walked the length of the lower corridor to the back of the Zeppelin, his footfalls sounded flat and scuffed along, his cadence slow and beaten. He climbed the steps up to the axial corridor and walked further back into the heart of the airship. He felt painfully aware of the massive hydrogen cells hanging above him, titanic gas pockets keeping them suspended in the sky. A swoosh of air whispered down the ventilation shafts and ran cool pirouettes alongside him as he walked. He was glad of the refreshment, it felt like a frigid splash of water across the burning skin of an embarrassed face.

  He stopped at the foot of the main climbing shaft and looked up. It ran vertical and tenebrous to the upper observation post, the wooden steps barely reflecting any ambient light from the night sky above. As he ascended the whir of the motors and inevitable creaks and groans of their living space receded until all he could hear was the sound of himself, painfully loud in the small, dingy confines of the sheer shaft. He emerged into the viewing dome at the top of the Zeppelin and sat on the small wooden bench set at its centre.

  The rum made him swoon and bolstered the feeling that he was sat amidst the clouds and somewhere distant stars. He had never suffered from vertigo, but this view, so unhindered by anything on any side, made him feel dwarfed, humble and irrelevant.

  As the engines working silently beneath propelled him and his colleagues high above the Nimbus populace, he was struck by the wonders of life, the nightmares that lurked in dimly lit corners and the laws of science that kept them all up there.

  The sky was his home, his place of work and solace. Deeper than any ocean, full of threat, mystery and promise, it was the expansive backdrop for his life and the only place he ever really wanted to be. A three dimensional nowhere, unmapped and forever changing.

  But tonight only an oppressing vastness loomed in his dimly lit corner.

  He made his way back to the galley to look for more rum.

  Three trivial things are the cure to all of man’s ails and woes: wine, wit and cleavage. And how many of our ills and woes have been caused by those three self-same things?

  Consul Hollmitte

  (on his arrest in a Lowlands brothel.)

  CHAPTER 61

  I felt rested and eager to make a start but the moment the cell lights went out, under the thin cover of my blanket and thinner dark, my escape plan seemed flawed and naive. Coyle would not come and I would have to spend the night reconsidering and scratching at my empty head and the dull, boring ache that ran across my chest. Then something scraped outside my door; scarcely discernible, but there, someone or something outside. I swallowed my nerves and slowed my breathing down. This time would be very different from my previous cell escape. This time I was meant to be staying put. The number of shadows dancing across the gap underneath the door were indeterminate, but I made out two or more muffled voices. Coyle had not come alone. Men like Coyle never did.

  I flexed my arms to get ready and turned my back to the door, bracing my feet against the wall my bunk abutted.

  The door opened, I heard their heavy shoes on the stone floor of my cell, then my door softly closed. I steadied myself anticipating their first blow.

  Ready to shove back and into them…

  ‘Lights on in Number 3,’ someone shouted.

  My cell light came on.

  Confused and blinking in the brightness, I turned to see Riley and another officer I had not seen before.

  ‘Up,’ barked Riley.

  I edged to the end of my bed and swung my legs round and down to the floor, my cuffs doing their best to hamper my progress and blood’s circulation.

  ‘You’re free to go. Charges dropped,’ said the other officer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. Now turn around.’ He held a small key out and I turned to show him my secured hands and he unlocked my cuffs.

  ‘We’ll give you your personal effects on the way out. Cooper, get the door.’

  Cooper hitched the cuffs onto his belt and opened my cell door.

  I rubbed at the deep pink grooves at my wrists where the cuffs had bitten.

  I had to have more time here. Had to think. My plan was evaporating. I shook my head.

  ‘Out.’ Riley pointed.

  It had hinged on Coyle coming to see me. A struggle. An escape into the guts of the station was what I wanted. Not this.

  I stepped out into the corridor and they led me through the locked doors, past the interview rooms and out to the lockers.

  ‘You can get changed here.’ Cooper opened my locker and threw me my clothes and meagre possessions. I signed the return slip before stooping to get my belongings.

  My back to them, I took off the boiler suit, and as I bent to disentangle my legs I deliberately rent the cut in my chest open. I hissed. I stooped to gather my belt, trousers, shoes, jacket and blood soaked shirt that had still somehow managed to stay damp from the earlier Lowlands drizzle. As I climbed into my trousers I stood quickly and feigned a swoon, blinked slowly a couple of times, staggered and held on to the wall for support.

  ‘He’s bleeding Riley, pretty bad.’

  ‘Not our problem.’

  I ignored them and continued pulling on my trousers.

  ‘Fuck he isn’t. He’s going to look like we done a number on him.’

  Riley stared at me and shook his head.

  ‘And we’ve got enough internal investigation crawling all over here as it is with… well you know.’

  Coyle. I thought.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Is there any way you can get me a dry shirt, anything, and get me cleaned up, maybe help stop the bleeding? There is not a Lowlands taxi out there going to take me looking like this, funeral outfit or not.’

  ‘You’re in the wrong place to be asking for favours,’ said Riley.

  ‘I know, but think about it. Obviously someone high up, for whatever reason, wants me out. How’s it going to appear me showing up for the welcoming committee looking like a spare rib?’

  Riley looked at Cooper.

  ‘Especially with liability Coyle on your watch.’

  ‘He is not my concern,’ said Riley.

  It amused me that Coyle, despite his absence, was still helping me get what I wanted.

  Riley’s shoulders dropped. ‘Fuck, OK, but Cooper, you do it, our medic is not in until morning and I want him out of here before Coyle gets back.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’ I asked.

  Riley ignored the question and pushed me along the corridor to the first aid room, as if I was still incarcerated and cuffed.

  He swiped a card to open it and we all went inside.

  The medical room smelled of bleach and unused, metallic surfaces reflecte
d the bright overhead strip-lights and bounced gleams and glints into every corner, as if germs could hide in shadows and the light added that final level of sterility. Cooper pulled half a dozen paper towels from a dispenser mounted on the rear wall and threw them at me. I wet them at a small sink and started to wipe myself down. Riley opened cupboards and doors until he found the one containing bandages, dressings and swabs and searched through them, looking for something suitable.

  ‘You know, I cannot work out if you are really lucky or in deep, deep shit,’ he said.

  I sat on the treatment chair with my wad of dark, used towels.

  ‘You’ve got the Horizoneers not wanting the bad publicity of dragging you through the system they hate so much, dropping the charges and actually claiming to the media this has done them good, you know, showing how low the government will stoop.’

  I shrugged again, fresh blood dripped down my chest and pooled in my navel to gather at my waistband. I still carried my belt.

  ‘Then you’ve got her Ladyship Leonora, prissier than boudoir lace, saying pretty much the same thing.’

  ‘Apart from the good publicity element,’ added the younger Mudhead.

  ‘And that’s not to mention, Sergeant, what did you call him, ah yes, Liability baying for your blood.’

  ‘Where is he? I would like to say goodbye properly before I leave,’ I said.

  Riley laid out a pair of small scissors, dressings, swabs and a few alcohol wipes.

  ‘I’m sure you would.’ He laughed. ‘I sent him to eat, convinced him he should have a break before coming to see you. He’s in the canteen right now grabbing handfuls of whatever it is that keeps him so sour. Reckon we’ve got about twenty minutes respite left. And counting.’ He passed me the wipes, ‘Now clean yourself up properly, then Cooper will stick you a dressing on. I ain’t paid enough to rub another man’s chest.’