by Dale Smith
She paused. There was no-one else.
‘Don’t let them know what I became.’
She fell into silence.
There wasn’t long left. The belt glowed like a star at her waist, and some of the valves had started to pop. They belched out a strange-smelling gas that she couldn’t place. Soon she would be dead, like Leiter. Blandish and the Albino would die with her, but... It was too late to stop now, of course. The belt had long since passed the critical stage, and if there was no escape for Blandish, then neither was there any for her. Which was nothing more than she had expected.
Her heart pounded heavily in her chest.
Her stomach growled nervously.
Her mind went back to that moment, that single moment around which the rest of her life pivoted. Leiter holding out his hand, telling her what they could do. He had been in front of her, and behind had been her father and her sisters. Everything her life had been, massing behind her, and everything it might be, towering above. It had seemed like the simplest decision in hindsight, no choice at all – only now could she remember the queasy electricity in her stomach, and the overwhelming desire to shake her head and go back to her father’s side.
Her hands were shaking. She didn’t know why.
Her foot started to tap. Electricity was flowing through her body, making it impossible to stay still. Her stomach growled loudly: possibly the feedback building up in the belt was starting to earth itself through her body.
She found herself thinking of her words to Emily:
‘You should run. You’ll feel better for it.’
Energy crackled through her whole body, and suddenly nothing seemed more desirable than running. She didn’t even look back at Leiter’s body, just discarded the belt on the ground and set off down the corridor. In the opposite direction from Blandish. She started at a gentle jog, but before she knew it, she was sprinting headlong into the darkness. She heard the scream long before she realised it was her own, but by then it was all over.
The belt overloaded.
Chapter Nine
9A. 23 February 1951, 03:45
Honoré, Burgess and Kate fell hard against the concrete, and dust and smoke flew again. For a moment, Honoré thought he was still in the heart of the flames, and he rolled and rolled and rolled. Then he felt the cool, night-time air against his skin, and he realised the fire was gone. He opened his eyes, and far above him Orion the Hunter looked down.
Without warning, a swarm of policemen descended on him, each shouting something incomprehensible to his fellows. Under normal circumstances, Honoré would’ve done his best to escape their clutches, but right at that moment he was too busy enjoying the feeling of fresh, cold air hitting his lungs. Despite the pain, he was still breathing.
He needn’t have worried: as soon as he was dragged to safety, they left him be, running back to the rubble to see if there were any other survivors they could manhandle. They left him with a big-eared, leather-jacketed navvie, who expertly checked him for injuries before patting him soundly on the back.
‘Don’t worry: just a bit of smoke,’ the navvie said. ‘Be right as rain in the morning, you just see.’
Honoré didn’t answer.
The navvie’s attention was already elsewhere. ‘Fantastic!’ he said wistfully, looking at the chaos around him. Then he suddenly seemed to remember Honoré. ‘Take a few deep breaths. I’ll be back in a minute.’
And then he disappeared.
Honoré took his advice anyway.
He sat for a few moments, staring at the sky, feeling his skin tighten and creak. His hand went tentatively up to his face, and for a moment he hoped that he’d burnt his fingertips, because everywhere he touched, he felt pain. His beard and moustache were gone, after years of successful cultivation – his shoulder length hair had had an enforced trim, too. But he was alive: Honoré decided that he could probably handle it.
As he sat up, he saw Kate looking over at him.
Just behind her, Burgess was being stretchered away by a team of ambulance men. They seemed concerned, but Honoré knew that he’d live, albeit in silence. Kate caught his eye, and started to hurry over. Before she arrived, Honoré was distracted by a tugging at his sleeves.
‘What goes on here?’ said a stubble-faced man with a pad and a pen.
Kate held his gaze. He could see a kind of triumph there as she watched the injured Albino being carried away.
‘Nothing,’ Honoré said absently, realising the reporter was still looking for an answer. ‘Just an insurance job. Nothing new.’
‘Right you are. You want me to give your name?’
Honoré didn’t answer.
Kate turned then, and saw Honoré looking: she looked embarrassed, to her credit. In the grey morning light, the fire caught her dark hair, dancing within it. Her eyes were cold grey, but in the glow of the fire she seemed alive in a way nobody ever had.
He barely noticed that the reporter was stumbling away.
‘Night,’ Honoré called over to him, but he didn’t know if he heard.
And then he saw it, and from that moment there was nothing else that he could look at. It was there, pulling his eyes to it: there was no escape. Its power was such that it pulled at his heart, too.
‘Lechasseur?’ Kate breathed, appearing beside him.
The fire was still burning. It must have been one hell of an explosion: he was surprised he hadn’t heard about it... but then unexploded bombs were almost an everyday hazard. The bunker was nothing but rubble now: anything caught in that fire wasn’t going to survive.
A few of the policemen had gathered around one spot – he could see them shouting to their colleagues, some in excitement, others in panic. He saw one turn quietly to one side and throw up on the ground.
Nothing could survive that blast.
Emily.
Ambulance men were called over, and Honoré could see them manoeuvring some charred wreck of a body onto a stretcher. For a moment, it had looked so inhuman that Honoré had assumed it was just another chunk of masonry. Even on closer attention, it seemed barely human – certainly its sex was indistinguishable from this distance.
‘I’m sure it isn’t your friend,’ Kate said.
It was only then that it really hit Honoré.
He would never see her elfin smile again, or her eyes sparkle as she told him about some ridiculously dangerous thing that had happened to her, but that she’d survived. The thought popped into his head that he’d never travel again, feeling the weird instantaneous synchronicity that he felt whenever they travelled together. He tried to dismiss the thought as selfish, but somehow it wouldn’t leave him. Instead, it overwhelmed him – there was no escape from the idea that now he had no-one to travel with, he was more alone than he had ever been in his life.
Tears came, but he didn’t want to say what provoked them.
‘This is yours,’ Kate said, holding up the belt. ‘You freed me. This can free you. Take it.’
Honoré looked at it for a moment: it hung limp, its lights dead.
He knew he still had one chance to save her. He had Little Emily, and it would be easy enough to go back another few weeks and change something, anything, that would mean that this would never happen. There was no reason not to, except one... Emily. She wasn’t here now to stop him, except in memory – if he did it, he could never tell her. What kind of distance would that put between them? He knew it was selfish, but the idea that in saving her he might lose her made him pause.
His hands went to his pockets. He didn’t know why.
Each hand grasped a wallet.
Honoré looked down again. His left hand held a battered leather wallet, empty except for a few ancient pound notes, his ration card and the commendation for ‘injury in the execution of his duty’ that he always carried with him. His right hand held an identical version,
except here and there the edges of the leather were tinged with dried human blood.
Honoré looked at them for a few moments.
He turned to Kate.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He took Little Emily from her hands.
9B. 23 February 1951, 03:23
‘You should run,’ Catherine said softly. ‘You’ll feel better for it.’
Emily decided it might be best to take her advice.
She had failed, and because of that, a woman was going to die. Because of her. She had found a memory that would stay with her, but it wouldn’t be one she cherished: perhaps she shouldn’t run, perhaps she should turn back and join Catherine in accepting the end. But if every life was precious, wasn’t hers too? Wasn’t even the Albino’s?
Time was running out, and as far as she could see, there was only one thing she could do, if she could run fast enough. She trusted Honoré, and she knew she could do this just right: the only downside was that her plan involved her running faster than the Albino, who had a good minute’s head start. Emily was good, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she was that good.
There wasn’t long left.
‘Burgess!’ she shouted at the top of her voice.
She wondered if he even thought of himself by that name any more, or if he had given himself up to the Albino – but it didn’t stop her from shouting again, as loud as she could. She listened for a moment, before she realised she would never get an answer. Then, she started to run again.
She looked at her watch: she’d allow 30 more seconds, just to be safe.
She ran forward, not bothering to shout now – either she’d find him, or she wouldn’t. If she didn’t... It would be one more memory she’d have to live with, that was all.
A high pitched whine started to fill the air, seeming to come from all around her. It started to shake the crumbling concrete, dust falling all around until Emily felt like she was running through thick smoke. Small chunks of concrete started to shake themselves loose: perhaps the explosion wouldn’t even come – the bunker would just shake itself to pieces and crush them all. Emily’s heart beat a little faster: she knew when the explosion was due, but that gave her no defence against falling rubble.
There was something in her path up ahead: a sizeable chunk of ceiling had fallen to the floor. Lying near it was the Albino, his face creased with pain. He screamed silently as he tried to drag himself across the floor: one of his arms was cradling the other, his right shoulder drooping alarmingly. There were beads of sweat standing out on his pale skin.
‘Stay still,’ Emily said, but he didn’t listen.
She hurried over and crouched in front of him.
‘You’ve broken your collarbone,’ she said to him, like talking to a stubborn child. She didn’t worry that she could identify the injury by sight, despite not knowing how. ‘You’re not going to crawl out of here.’
The Albino looked up at her. Desperation overtook pain for just a moment.
‘We’re going to die here,’ Emily said. ‘Because of you. You and your stupid plans. You know that?’
Looking into his eyes, Emily could see that he did.
She sighed softly.
Emily stood, the Albino’s pink eyes following her up. She unfastened her coat and held it open, fixing the Albino’s eyes with hers as she revealed what was underneath.
‘If it wasn’t for me,’ Emily said, ‘you would’ve died here.’
But the Albino wasn’t looking at her: he was looking at the belt around her waist, its valves flashing to themselves in satisfaction. Little Honoré had always been with her, just as its namesake would always be.
‘You remember that,’ she said.
Then she held her hand against the Albino’s leg and activated the belt.
Together, they fell.
9C. 23 February 1951, 03:47
Catherine lay on the stretcher, staring up at the sky. It was dark, a good few hours from morning, and the stars were doing their best to shine through the smoke. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen her life. She wanted to cry, but the tears couldn’t come.
She didn’t feel any pain. That surprised her: there was just a sort of cold numbness. People buzzed all around her, occasionally trying to attract her attention or say things to her. She couldn’t hear them, couldn’t speak back, so it seemed better to stare up at the stars. They had fussed at her ever since they had pulled her from the rubble. She didn’t know why: even she knew she was dying. And yet even that thought couldn’t penetrate the numbness entirely.
A familiar face suddenly appeared over her, shaking its head and saying something she couldn’t quite make out.
It was the lawyer, Schreck. He must have had to stand on a box to look down at her, but there he was. He was shaking his head: Catherine didn’t think that he’d recognised her. Was she so disfigured? Or was it just that he hadn’t met her yet? It was hard to remember. She turned her head slowly, the whole world lurching around her and a dull ache penetrating her fugue for just a moment. She tried to call to him, but his back was turned and her voice had been eaten by the fire.
Schreck hopped away, but Catherine followed him with her eyes. He was fussing around another stretcher, this one attended by the same ambulance men and two other figures, stocky and stoic: Frisk and Stump. Catherine tried to blink to clear her eyes, but she found that her eyelids wouldn’t move.
She recognised the figure on the stretcher.
Schreck fussed around, issuing instructions, making sure his client survived. He was burned and scarred, and obviously sedated (was that the cause of her own fugue?), but there was no mistaking his pale skin.
Catherine thought of Leiter.
She wished she could speak now, could stand and walk over to Burgess on his comfortable stretcher. She wanted to bend over and whisper in his ear, soft and low.
‘I know your future,’ she’d say quietly. ‘You have eight months to live. And in all that time, you’ll never say another word. And then you’ll die in the fire and pain you thought you’d escaped tonight.’
She wondered if she would feel satisfaction if she could do that, if anything could penetrate the thick, milky haze she found herself drowning in.
Somehow, she didn’t think so.
Just then, something flared in her line of vision: a light so bright that, for a moment, all she could see was whiteness. It took almost an age for her eyes to readjust, and when they did, she saw that none of the ambulance men rushing around her seemed to have noticed. She wished for a moment that she had her smoked glasses again, but then she wouldn’t be able to enjoy the naked brilliance of the stars.
As some of her focus returned, Catherine saw that the bright light had brought with it two figures. One knelt down over the other, a hand on his leg, the other hand at her own waist: it took a moment, then she recognised them – Blandish, and on the floor the Albino, injured but alive.
Her Albino, from eight months hence.
So. He had survived, and Blandish too. So. There was something crawling inside her – something gnawing slowly at the edges of the haze she found herself in. Something acid and terrible, that grew stronger the more she looked at Blandish and the Albino.
She wanted to turn her head, but no longer had the energy.
They had survived and Leiter had died.
So.
It could be only minutes before they found the mechanical shell of Leiter’s body. Moments more before Schreck recognised it as something useful, something valuable, and made the arrangements for the body to disappear without a trace. Without too many questions.
So.
And then it went, as quickly as it had come, that acid tooth dissolving into nothing. There was just nothing left, nothing left inside that could even begin to feel. Leiter was gone. Had always been gone: as much as she’d strugg
led, to make things different, make things better... she’d been running blindfold on a treadmill, getting nowhere.
She saw Blandish rush over to Schreck, leaving the Albino clutching his arm, sitting on the floor. The lawyer was handed something that seemed to make him angry. After that...
All the stars in the sky started to fall, one after the other. They were all falling straight towards her, as if in death she became irresistible. As they fell, they converged in silence, until the whole sky was nothing but a vast, white glow. She tried to shield her eyes from it, until she realised that it didn’t hurt: this light was softer, more gentle than any she had known in her life.
This light loved her.
It rained down over her.
Catherine realised she was dying.
‘No!’ she cried, almost rising.
Then it was over.
Chapter Ten
10A. 23 February 1951, 03:09
‘I will,’ Honoré said. ‘Thanks.’
He had two wallets: everything was going to be all right. He took the belt and set the controls, activated it and fell. The hangover it gave him was the sweetest feeling he’d ever had in his life. Part of him wanted to scream as he fell: sheer, unbridled relief.
And then he arrived.
Concrete walls surrounded him, damp with long years of neglect. He checked the belt, his Little Emily: he had just over a minute until he and Catherine arrived for the first time. He had made it: just as he had to. It wouldn’t be long until he saw the real Emily again, safe and sound.
‘Who the bloody hell’re you?’
Honoré’s first instinct was to find cover and unsling his rifle. His next was to tell himself that his war had ended a good, long time ago, and wasn’t it about time those reflexes faded? He didn’t put his hands in the air, but he kept them where they could be seen to be empty and unthreatening. Then he slowly turned around.
