One Word Kill (Impossible Times Book 1)

by Mark Lawrence

  ‘Where’s Eva?’

  In the bed next door, David rolled my way. He was fourteen and had also been a target for Eva’s stream of consciousness oversharing. ‘ICU.’

  ‘Hell.’ When I’d first heard that term I understood it as ‘I see you.’ But the acronym stood for Intensive Care Unit, and it wasn’t a place you wanted anyone to see you.

  ‘Where you going?’ David sat up as I got to my feet.

  ‘Checking on her, of course.’ I pushed my drip stand ahead of me. It was on a splayed foot set with six caster wheels and should have been easy to steer. Instead, like every supermarket trolley ever, it wanted to veer into any given obstacle.

  I reached the nurses’ station at the entrance to the ward and answered the expectant gaze of the woman on duty with a lie. ‘I think there’s something wrong with David. He’s frothing at the mouth.’

  As she hurried to investigate, I left the ward unhindered.

  The good thing about hospitals is that they’re always full of directions. I took the lift to the sixth floor and followed the signs to the ICU. I drew the occasional glance in my hospital gown with accompanying chemo takeout, but nobody challenged me.

  Getting into the ICU was a matter of timing. I had to wait almost half an hour for my moment, which was also long enough to be sure that David hadn’t grassed me up, since nobody came to collect me.

  The number of nurses at a nurses’ station is governed by a well-known mathematical distribution named after Siméon Denis Poisson and demonstrated by him in 1837. It was famously used to describe and predict the number of cadets kicked to death by their horses at a Prussian military academy, but it works equally well for nurses. Random events conspire to call the nurses from their station, and if you bide your time, the number on duty will eventually be zero.

  I walked in past the empty reception, checked the board beside it and found that Eva Schwartz was in Room 5, then proceeded toward her door.

  I pushed into the room. It felt as though it should have been darkened but it wasn’t. Painfully bright hospital lights picked out every detail in harsh relief. Machines crowded the room, more of them than they could possibly be using. A sats monitor charted respirations, blood O2, and heart rate, a cylinder dispensed oxygen along a plastic tube, a drip stand offered intravenous fluids, other tubes drained the excess, additional leads made their enquiries and reported to boxes of electronics all humming and beeping to themselves. The room was white. Too white. The sheets could star in any washing powder commercial. And, in their midst, staining their perfection, the uncooperative human stubbornly dying amid this array of cleverness and invention.

  Eva looked very small in that bed. Very alone in that room among the gently murmuring medical equipment.

  I navigated a path around the various stands to crouch in her eye line. She wasn’t asleep, but I couldn’t tell if she saw me. ‘Hey.’ I thought I should have more to say. If not me, then who? We were walking down the same path. ‘Eva . . .’

  She studied me from some distant place, her dark eyes hardly moving. Her cracked lips made no attempt at words.

  ‘Look . . . I . . .’ I pulled up a plastic chair almost identical to the ones at school and winced at the scraping noise. I sat where she could see me. ‘I’ve been caught up in my own stuff, Eva. And I’m sorry. I should have been a better . . . person . . . better friend. I’ve been rude when I should have been kind. You wanted someone to hear you. We all do really.’

  I watched her, and she watched me back, a papery residue of dried saliva on her dry lips. ‘They’ll come and take me out of here soon enough, I guess.’ I glanced at the door. ‘I’m not used to being the one doing the talking here.’ I tried a smile, but it hurt my face. There was an ache in my chest from emotions that wouldn’t fit right. Some of it was the self-pity that Demus had refused to show me. ‘I don’t know if it helps, Eva, but . . . there’s so much more to this world than I ever thought there was . . .’ I bit my lip and thought of the worlds splitting away from us at every moment in infinite profusion. There were an infinity of Evas living every kind of life. Evas who survived her cancer, Evas who never got cancer in the first place, Evas who got killed in a car crash on their way to the diagnosis, Evas who flourished and realised their ambitions, and grew fat and old and happy. Every possibility probed. The good and the bad. I didn’t know if it mattered. All I cared about was the Eva in front of me, her breath rattling in, rattling out, her heart beating across a screen.

  I understood then why Demus needed me to be him, needed my Mia to be his Mia. We might live in a multiverse of infinite wonder, but we are what we are, and can only care about what falls into our own orbit. ‘I guess I’m just saying that none of us really know what’s going on or why, and that we never know what’s happening or where we’re going.’ I was babbling and knew it. I took her hand and the smallest smile reached her mouth.

  The door opened, and a dark-haired nurse hissed at me. ‘You need to come out of there. Right now.’

  ‘I’m staying until her parents come.’ I took tight hold of the bed rail, then met the woman’s stare. ‘And you can’t make me leave.’

  CHAPTER 17

  The night after my last session of chemo was the night of the Arnots’ party. John phoned me four times between getting home from school and coming over.

  ‘What are you wearing?’ That was the first call.

  ‘Uh. Clothes?’ I hadn’t given the matter any thought at all.

  ‘Duh. But what clothes?’

  ‘The ones I’m wearing.’

  ‘Really?’ He managed to put enough doubt into a single word to make me question myself. And he hadn’t even seen what I was wearing.

  ‘No, you’re right, I’m going to change into spandex and those glam rock trousers I have to oil my legs to get into.’

  ‘ . . .’

  ‘Jeans and a T-shirt. Now get your arse over here, because we might have to abduct Simon.’

  The next call was about booze.

  ‘Can you get a bottle of red and two bottles of white?’

  ‘Wine? John, your father has a fucking cellar full of the stuff.’ I’d been down there. There were literally thousands of bottles. Several dozen of them dust-laden vintages from the 1930s.

  ‘Yeah, but he’s wised-up to me taking it. There’s a combination lock on the door now!’

  I glanced toward the living room where Mother was reading and lowered my voice to a hiss. ‘If you can’t crack his wine cellar, it doesn’t bode well for breaking into his secure laboratory!’

  ‘Just get some plonk, will you. And some beer. Don’t want to look too posh.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ I put the phone down with a sigh. Successful booze buying depended on the right pantomime. I had, for example, been buying my mother a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream every year for the last six or seven years without any parental input. She loved the stuff, but didn’t trust herself to buy it, and so birthdays were a doddle. And when a ten-year-old boy walks into an off-licence, where they all know him, to buy a bottle of creamy liqueur, there’s no problem. If a fifteen-year-old with greasy hair and scrubbed-down acne tries to buy a six-pack of Special Brew . . . very different story.

  The place for a teenager to buy beer was the supermarket. But you had to pad your basket out sufficiently to prove you were there on parents’ orders. For best results, take a shopping list on which the beers are written, and sandwich them between a bag of frozen peas and some fish fingers. The true artist invests in some female sanitary products, too.

  The next call came ten minutes after the time that John had sworn he would arrive by.

  ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Cheap wine, check. Expensive beer, check.’ I’d taken off the hat to exploit any sympathy on offer. I don’t know if I got any, but the teller couldn’t see me through her checkout fast enough. ‘Fish fingers, check. Baked beans, check. Card for Henri, check.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s his twenty-first.
I got him a card.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘So, where are you?’

  ‘High Street. I’m trying to get some condoms, but . . . I don’t suppose you—’

  I hung up. Yes, I had to admire the lofty heights of his optimism. No, I wasn’t going to buy them for him if he was too chicken.

  The last call came when he was half an hour late.

  ‘I’m leaving! I’m leaving!’

  ‘You’re back at your house?’

  ‘No, I’m leaving. Pay attention.’

  ‘Leaving your house?’

  ‘I’m heading for the door. The phone cord won’t stretch much further! Cover your ears. When it pings back it’s going to make a hell of a—’

  John arrived an hour late.

  ‘What? Nobody is ever on time for a party.’

  ‘My mum’s giving us a lift to Simon’s. We’ll probably walk from there.’

  John shrugged then spread his arms and beckoned my attention with wafting fingers.

  ‘Very nice,’ I said without enthusiasm. He had on a baseball jacket he bought in the States, white and red suede, sporting a large 41. Black trousers and shiny leather shoes. ‘You’ll be able to talk to all the girls about that time you went to America.’ He also appeared to have showered in aftershave, possibly hoping that the fumes would overwhelm the object of his affections and leave her unable to resist his attentions.

  Mother poked her head out of the living room. ‘Hello, John. You’re looking very dapper.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs H.’

  Mother frowned at that. ‘Are we ready to go?’

  I picked up the booze bag, each of its contents individually wrapped in a shirt to stop any clinking or clanking. I hoped that when I said ‘party’ Mother’s imagination still ran to images of the ones I went to when I was eleven. ‘I’m staying over at John’s, remember?’

  ‘I know.’ Mother gathered her car keys. ‘And John, don’t let him overdo it. He really should be in bed by ten.’

  I made no protest. If you’ve no intention of obeying, then why not agree. Besides, I felt pretty rough. I could see myself wanting my bed by ten.

  Simon’s mother greeted us conspiratorially at the door. ‘He’s pretending to have forgotten all about it, and is also claiming a cold. Take no excuses. I’m depending on you boys.’

  We clumped up the stairs in our shoes.

  ‘Up and at ’em, Si!’

  ‘Party! Party!’

  Simon came to his bedroom door wrapped in a blanket, sniffing.

  ‘I like it! Great poncho!’ John took hold of one arm.

  ‘I see the plan is to jump a whole bunch of bases and get the girls under your covers in one step.’ I took the other arm.

  ‘Wait! I’m ill!’ He backpedalled and started to win. Heavy people can do that.

  ‘No.’ I pulled off my woollen hat exposing my baldness. ‘I’m ill. You’re just antisocial.’

  That at least stopped him reversing.

  ‘You’re doing this to keep Mia at the D&D table,’ John said. ‘Remember?’

  Simon exhaled his defeat and slumped.

  ‘Come along with us, say hi to Elton, wish his brother a happy birthday. Swig a coke. Dance if you want to. Duty done. You can come home.’

  ‘Alright.’ And Simon let us lead him down the stairs as though he were walking the last mile on death row.

  The walk to the Arnots’ flat was long, cold, and dark. We talked about the microchip more than about the party. John had found his father’s list of passwords with astonishing ease. They were written on a piece of paper folded into his wallet and helpfully labelled ‘passwords’. He had seven of them and Simon surmised that he was probably just given them because of his seniority, as a backup in case of emergency. As far as John knew, his father couldn’t tell one end of a computer from the other.

  ‘He sometimes needs help using his programmable calculator, and I know for a fact that’s one calculator that has never had a program written on it!’

  We crossed the Arnots’ local high street, a parade of smaller shops with a pub at each end. A figure detached itself from the blackness outside The Spotted Horse as we approached.

  ‘They let you little ones out after dark then?’ Ian Rust tilted his head in question. The lamplight painted his hollow face in shadows. Beneath his right eye, an angry three-inch scar ran parallel to his cheekbone.

  None of us spoke.

  ‘Heard you kicked a friend of mine, Hayes.’ Rust showed his teeth. Perhaps he thought he was smiling. I doubted that he really knew what a friend was. ‘I want hold of that girl you were with. My Mia. She’s been keeping a low profile. But you know where she is, don’t you, Nicky?’

  ‘I’ve not seen her.’ My voice shook.

  Rust’s smile broadened. ‘You’ll tell me, Hayes. Little Nicky Hayes. Number 18 Redhill Road. Minus one father. Not feeling too well of late.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ I realised that it was John who’d said it. It was pretty much the bravest thing I’d ever seen.

  ‘I’m bigger than you.’ It wasn’t exactly witty, but he had called me Little Nicky, and I couldn’t leave John hanging.

  Simon kept his eyes firmly on the ground, frowning intensely, but he did step up to take his place between us.

  Rust’s impression of a smile slipped just the smallest fraction. I imagined that behind those shark-dead eyes of his he might be considering just knifing all three of us as a serious option. A bunch of men chose that moment to emerge from The Spotted Horse, light and laughter spilling into the street with them. Rust snarled, and instead of attacking he sketched a bow.

  ‘Ladies.’ He waved us on. ‘I’ve got a busy night planned. Can’t stop to play just now. Catch you later.’

  We walked a hundred yards before anyone spoke. ‘Is he following us?’ Simon asked.

  I looked back. I was still trembling. Ready to fight or run, with heavy odds on the running. ‘No.’

  ‘Jesus! I may need a new pair of trousers.’ John shook his head. ‘I just told the worst head-case in the school to fuck himself. I’m dead.’

  ‘He’s not in school anymore,’ Simon said. ‘He got expelled. For pulling a knife on a teacher.’

  ‘Thanks, Simon, for that helpful reminder.’

  ‘We’re with you.’ I tried to sound confident.

  ‘OK . . . we’re dead.’ John started walking again, picking up the pace. ‘C’mon. This makes it even more important that I get laid quickly.’

  We felt the pulse of the beat before we saw the crowd outside the Arnots’ flat. We threaded our way through the guests who’d already had enough dancing and drinking to weather the cold and inserted ourselves through the open door. One of the middle Arnot brothers was watching the entrance: Marc, a man of few words and packed with muscle, but always with a smile ready behind a stern exterior. He waved us through, and moments later we were wedging our way into the kitchen to unload our offerings.

  The entire ground floor of the flat would have fitted inside either of the two living rooms John had entertained us in a few days earlier. Even so, somehow dozens of people were in the main room, dancing or chilling at the edges. Lionel Richie surrendered to the Pointer Sisters who began to declare, in no uncertain terms, just how excited they were. We took beers from the sideboard and tried to look as if we knew what we were doing.

  It wasn’t the music I listened to in my room. It lacked the uptight, self-deprecating introspective angst of my chosen groups, but God, it made you want to dance. The heat made me thirsty and the can gave me something to do with my hands. It was empty before I knew it.

  Fingers tugged at my sleeve. ‘Hi!’ Mia in her war-paint, smiling.

  ‘Hey.’ I had to fit the word past the music.

  She introduced us to the two girls who had pressed in behind her. I didn’t hear their names. I shouted some inane small talk at her, but, thankfully, it didn’t register over the beat.

  Mia gestured with her head to the middle of the room. ‘Co
me on.’ At least that’s what my lip-reading skills suggested she had said. She set a small hand behind my elbow and I let myself be steered away from the wall.

  The night of Henri Arnot’s twenty-first was the night I discovered how a large amount of music and a modest amount of beer could take five hours and zip them past you like an express train. My body, which had protested bitterly about walking the two miles from Simon’s to Elton’s, didn’t so much as murmur a complaint about sweating through a night’s dancing. I guess every generation thinks it’s born into the golden age of music, but that night it was easy to believe that nobody had had it as good as we did. Chaka Khan let us rock her, Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five had white lines for us to follow, and Frankie Goes To Hollywood demanded that we ‘Relax’.

  ‘Where’s Simon?’ I steered John away from the pair of Mia’s friends who seemed to be in competition for his affections.

  ‘Crashed.’ John nodded to the darkest corner where Simon’s head could just be seen emerging from a pile of coats. He was fast asleep.

  One of the girls reclaimed John, and I found my way back to the kitchen, floating on a beer buzz and dance high. I felt rather like a stray helium balloon drifting on the currents. The kitchen was crowded, though less so than the living room, and with an older demographic. Elton’s dad stood with his back to a counter strewn with mostly empty bowls of crisps and small plates of twiglets, a foodstuff so disgusting that it was always the last to go at any party.

  ‘Nick. How you doing?’ Elton’s dad spoke with a deep French-Madagascan accent that I had to focus on to unravel.

  ‘Good, thanks.’ I grinned. ‘Great.’

  ‘Good.’

  Like all of my friends’ dads, with the recent exception of John’s, I didn’t know his name or what he did, but I knew he was old, older than Mother, older than Demus; hair thinning and speckled with white, face lined and tired. And I knew that nearly fifteen years ago he had, at the general invitation of the British government, got on a boat in Port Suarez with his pregnant wife and four tiny sons, and spent weeks sailing toward our cold, wet island. And he’d made a home here, built a life, watched his children grow.