Blood dripped on Paul’s face. He opened his eyes and could see nothing, at first. Gradually, the image of Walter’s large, red face appeared. He was choking. But it was a strange, flat image, as if Paul was looking at it through a television screen.
He leaned forwards, putting all his weight on the other man’s throat. Blood and saliva dripped from his furious face, and suddenly Paul was no longer a man, nor a priest.
He was just a beast, a savage beast fuelled by rage and fear.
* * *
Adrian heard noises through the darkness, and his head whipped up.
Voices. Someone was outside – Walter and someone else.
He pictured two men, two ugly grown-ups, about to make their way towards that dark, foul-smelling room. These two men would grab them, kill them. And if Alice had really seen those… things in the fridge, maybe they’d also eat them.
He leaned his head against Alice’s, tried to speak, say something, but couldn’t.
Walter had tied them up. Gagged them, too. The thick strip of cloth was cutting the corners of his lips. It hurt, but he couldn’t do anything about it. How long have we been here? He wondered. Time is different, in the dark.
Alice nudged him, a soft motion of her shoulder against his. Did you hear that?
He dipped his chin, making a humming sound in his chest. Yes.
They waited. The dog they’d seen, the wounded one, let out a suffering cry. Shortly after that, the door opened loudly. There was more talk between the two men, but it was too low to make out the words. More time went by, and everything was silent again.
Alice sighed. Adrian didn’t know if it was out of relief or disappointment. Maybe she thought someone had come here to save them. But nobody knew they were here.
CRACK!
They shuddered. It sounded like the front door had suddenly burst open. More words were spoken, but they were different now. Hissed, kind of like a snake would speak. Then, they heard the gunshot. Adrian instinctively turned to Alice, tried to cover her with his own body.
Outside, there were new noises. Grunts, growls. Adrian thought they sounded like animal sounds. Maybe the dog was attacking someone.
The children shivered and listened, until the grunts stopped.
What’s happening? Oh godgodgod what’s happening?
He heard footsteps, then a strange sound, something being torn apart. A cloth maybe. Footsteps again. Uncertain ones, like those of the drunk people he’d seen at adults’ parties. Coming closer now.
Adrian wished he could curl up with Alice, become a single body of warmth and comfort. He pressed against her, as she did the same, foreheads touching.
The door began to open, and the light filtered in, burning his eyes. Adrian stared through narrow eyelids, trying to see who, or what, was coming through.
It was a ’wraith.
Adrian gasped. The gag on his mouth got sucked in, and something tied up in his throat, hurting him.
The creature had a deformed head, its black bulging shape cut out against the light in the corridor behind it. It walked hunched over, in pain, breathing heavily.
Adrian closed his eyes. He somehow knew that Alice was doing exactly the same.
There was a long silent pause. Then, Adrian felt the delicate pressure of a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Oh, children,” a broken voice said.
Adrian looked up. The light was shining on Father Paul’s face, but from behind, so it was hard to see. But it was him. A piece of material was wrapped around his head, covering one of his eyes, and there were lines of red on his cheek. But it was Father Paul. And it was all okay, now.
Paul spoke comforting words (words Adrian could hardly make out through the strong, relieved thumping of his heart) and began to untangle the knots that held them captive. Adrian felt like something else, something stiff and cold and frightened inside his chest had begun to untangle, too.
* * *
They had lain huddled together on the floor for what seemed to be hours. The three of them, on that dirty floor, the children wrapped in Paul’s embrace. They had wept tears of relief, washing away the anguish of the world outside, enjoying each other’s presence. After that, there had been questions, the piecing together of each other’s movements in the last couple of days. Paul had avoided talking about the bandage he’d tied across his eye (It’ll be okay, he lied to them).
At last, he had pulled them up, and walked them through the door.
“Don’t look now,” he said, pressing his hands against their eyes, and guiding them across the living room where Walter’s body lay. He too tried not to look. I have killed someone, he thought, as they inched through the room. The words left him surprisingly indifferent. Perhaps it was like one of those wounds, when the pain sets in after a while, he told himself.
When they stepped through the door, Alice stared up at him and asked, “The dog? Will it be all right?”
Paul sighed. “I don’t know.”
Adrian whistled, and the three of them turned towards the front door. After a few seconds, the dog peeked through, wet nose sniffing the air.
“Come here boy,” said Adrian, slapping his knees. The dog hesitated, then descended the stairs towards them. The cut in its pelt caused it to walk guardedly, awkwardly. It sniffed Paul’s trousers at looked up at him with the pure innocence of animals.
“Can he come with us, Father Paul?” asked Alice.
“I think it’s a she,” Paul said, as he stroked the fur between the dog’s ears. “I don’t see why not,” he said after a while.
As they began to walk away, not yet knowing where to, Paul noticed something on the ground. He knelt down, picked it up. His priest’s collar. It must’ve fallen out of his pocket, where Claudio had placed it to hide it from the men in black. Ahead of him, the children were absorbed by the dog, asking it questions in funny voices, patting it, laughing.
Paul sighed a deep sigh, then dropped the collar in the mud. Whether the god he’d devoted his life to existed or not, he knew a murderer wasn’t worthy of serving him.
One corpse lay in the house, though two men had died there, that day – Walter, and the priest he’d been.
Chapter 16
R3dPill
Whirling clouds of white, grey and black, stretching out beyond the horizon like a treacherous ocean. Sometimes, the clouds were thick and dark and impenetrable. Others, they were soft and white and gentle. Sean marvelled at the scale of that natural display, at the laughable scope of their plane as it flew above it.
The door to the cockpit was now open, and he peered through it at the two pilots. Their rather exotic names, Sean had learnt, were Quentin Thalo and Emil Penage. They carried out their job in silence, exchanging few words, hands gliding expertly between buttons, switches and the control yokes (that’s what Checkmate had called them, anyway). As someone who appreciated technical skills, he respected these men. Whatever insane plan they had bought into, and despite their allegiance to the weird old hippie, these blokes knew how to pilot a plane. Sean chuckled at the thought of this. These men know how to fly.
“Do you know where we’re going, exactly?” he asked Checkmate, as his eyes returned to the view outside. “What we’re meant to do?”
Checkmate cleared his voice. “Well, given our backgrounds, I think it’s safe to assume they want us to perform some sort of hack. A complicated one.” He paused, then added, “Jeremy says we are the most important people on this trip.” Even without turning, Sean could picture Checkmate’s foolish proud smile as he uttered those words.
But I believed it too, didn’t I? My ’higher calling’ and all that. I still do, in a way.
“As for where we’re going exactly,” continued Alec, “I don’t think they know it either.”
Sean looked at him. “What do you mean? Sure they know where we’re going.”
Alec smiled an irritatingly enigmatic smile.
“Come on, what do you mean?” Sean pressed him on.
“They’re fly
ing with GPS. I mean, that’s what they’re using to track our position relative to our destination. There were other possible ways, but they went with this one.”
Sean nodded, wishing he’d just get to the point. “Okay, go on.”
“Thing is, GPS relies on satellite data to pinpoint coordinates, right? But the satellites…” Checkmate frowned. As if to himself, he added, “… not even sure how many functioning satellites are left…” He took a quick breath, as if clearing his mind. “Anyway, GPS relies on satellites, but the satellites rely on constant updates from ground stations. Pretty sure there aren’t any reliable ground stations at the moment.”
“So?”
“Well, I think they’re guesstimating. You know – they figured out how far off the GPS coordinates were, ran tests, whatever, and adjusted accordingly. That means they probably have a fairly good idea of where our arrival airstrip is, but I doubt they can be one hundred percent certain.” Checkmate smiled, as if everything was fine and dandy.
Sean sat up, straightening his back. He opened his mouth, but too many questions were crowding his mind, and shut it again. He peered back outside, at the clouds. He remembered how low they had been, in Bately. If these pilots had no precise idea of where they were heading, and couldn’t see past these clouds, then –
“They’ll have to fly down, through the clouds, try and spot the landing strip. Visually, I mean. With their eyes,” he muttered.
Checkmate nodded. “Yup. A scud run. We have to hope that the skies above our landing spot are relatively clear, and that we’re close enough to the strip to land safely. There might not be a lot of time for course correction, at that point.”
“We have to hope?”
“Among other things. A lot of other things. Yeah.”
Sean was startled. He stared at the other boy, wanting to slap him, wanting to shake him into sanity. But then again, he too had accepted to follow Jeremy on board this plane, hadn’t he?
“How can you be so fucking calm?” he asked.
Checkmate raised his shoulders. It was a quick, unconcerned movement. “I trust Jeremy,” he said simply.
Sean threw a glance at the old man. He was lying on the sofa, eyes closed, humming softly through a placid smile. His hands were joined on his chest, fingers tapping to the tune.
Fuck me, thought Sean.
“You trust him, eh?” he asked.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Without opening his eyes, Jeremy called out to them. “Try and catch a bit of sleep, boys. You’ll need all your wits about you, when we land.” He adjusted the pillow beneath his head. “Not long now.”
Sean sank in his seat. He doubted he’d manage to sleep, but anything that would shut Checkmate up was worth trying.
* * *
It was a dream, and Sean knew it. Yet he couldn’t help being surprised by the fact old Nan had Jeremy’s face. She (he) sat in the rocking chair, in the living room back in Bately, gently swaying to and fro, knitting a scarf with gnarled, crinkled fingers.
“It’s going to be okay, Sean. Believe me,” Nan said, looking up at him. She had Jeremy’s beard, now. She was knitting it into the scarf. It looked disgusting. “Look, we’re flying,” she said, waving a long knitting needle towards a window. Clouds were drifting past, beyond it.
“You’re meant for great things, Redpill,” the old creature croaked, eyes following the clouds. “You’re meant for great things, and I’ll make sure you fulfil your destiny. I’m not really going to give you a choice, in this matter, boy.”
Sean was about to reply, when the whole house suddenly tilted sideways, and he began to fall. As he dropped, a hand clutched his. Tight, hurting him. Jeremy was right there, just an inch from his face, rotting breath oozing through his lips.
“Brace now, boy.” Jeremy’s mouth widened unnaturally and he began to scream. “BRACE!”
* * *
“BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”
Sean awoke with a shudder, his heart racing. A million different sounds broke into his consciousness – the howling and hissing of wind, the ghastly roar of the engines, the creaking and groaning of the plane’s hull. And the voice of one of the pilots in the cockpit, oddly doubling up through the loudspeakers.
A hand was gripping his – Checkmate’s. The young hacker’s face was as pale as the whitest of clouds, all eyes and gaping mouth and stretched skin. Witnessing his fear made Sean tremble. Following Checkmate’s stare, he looked outside. And thought he might die, there and then.
The clouds weren’t below them any more. They rose towards the sky, colossal towering monsters stemming from the thundering darkness below. It was like flying towards a gigantic garden of nuclear mushroom clouds, a nightmare expanding along the Earth’s curve and disappearing in the distance, where Sean could only make out the tops of those leviathans. Huge storms seemed to be raging inside them, with furious bolts of lightning zig-zagging through their breadth. The sheer scale of it made Sean’s racing heart skip a beat. Whole cities could fit inside them, he thought. He recognised their shape – cumulonimbus. Had Checkmate said something about–
The jet was suddenly propelled upwards. A powerful thrust, heaving them up from below. Every organ in Sean’s body seemed to be sucked down towards his feet, as he clung to the armrests. Then, an equally powerful gust of wind pushed them downwards, towards the mushroom clouds.
The pilots were shouting at one another. The cockpit door swung from side to side, revealing and hiding their contracted bodies, their frantic movements. Sean couldn’t make out the words above the throng. Something about the airstrip being down there, about fuel running low.
Shitshitshitshitshit we’re flying through them they’re gonna fly through them.
Sean braced himself, and turned towards Jeremy. He’d hoped to find some degree of comfort in the man’s tranquil smile, but to his terror, he saw that it had been wiped away. In its place, not quite fear, rather the focussed expression he himself had worn countless times, when sitting down to confront a particularly challenging hacking session.
The plane’s nose dipped downwards, as they entered one of the cloud giants. It was like they’d been grabbed in some mighty fist, shaking them, rattling them, trying to rip them apart. Outside, the view was a vortex of convulsing vapour. Dirt was beginning to build up on the window: small brown grains of sand, splattered with yellowish water. Sean felt as if the myriad of opposing forces unleashed against the plane had somehow transferred to him – every inch of his body was being dragged and thrust in conflicting directions, under the mounting pressure from above. He closed his eyes and felt fragile, weak, delicate. Ridiculously breakable against the powers engulfing them.
More noises. New ones. The engines revving up, screeching. One of the pilots shouted something about a ’pitot’ tube, but there was no knowing what that meant. Then, the noise that overpowered all the rest – the hail.
It began with no warning. A sudden transition, like a breath held, then they were being battered. Huge stones of ice, as big as a fist, thumping and beating and leaving dents in the plane. One of them struck the cockpit’s windshield. It cracked, slim jagged lines erupting around the point of impact. Checkmate howled. Sean would have too, if he could. He was paralysed, capable only of feeling fear.
The pilots weren’t speaking any more. Not words, anyway. There were lots of strained groans, shouts, tense mutterings. But Sean might have been imagining them all. Perhaps they were his own. It was hard to tell.
They were shaken again and again and again. The hail stopped, as quickly as it had arrived. There was an odd feeling of release around Sean. Something had changed. Suddenly, they were below the clouds again.
He peered outside, beneath the jet. They were so close to the ground that Sean’s head reeled back, thumping against the headrest.
The first glimpse he caught of what had been the USA, was a blur of soggy land, thick with rain and mud. A vast desert, dimpled with solitary rocks, and cut through by a long, cracked road.
There was no landing strip.
As soon as this registered with him, he heard the co-pilot shout “Too low! Too low! We’re too fucking low!”
Sean saw the land race towards them, the plane rocking and careening and going too fast. Even he could tell, with no knowledge or experience. They were going far too fast.
He desperately brought his chest to his knees, wrapping his arms around his head. It came instinctively, but he hoped it was the position they told you to take in those safety booklet comics.
Then, the whole world seemed to crash and splinter and collapse, before vanishing into nothingness.
Chapter 17
The Warden Pays a Visit
Cathy decided she’d sleep in the clinic. There was still a lot of work to do, and much to sort out. She stretched out on a couch in the waiting room, arm resting against her aching forehead. Yes, the couch would do. Her bed was too far, now. Too far and too wide for her alone. Something inside her twitched, an uncomfortable feeling, a longing she tried to suppress.
What a joke. Being the other woman. I should have known.
It hurt her pride, to lie there and think about Edward, doing her best to avoid mentioning his name even just in thought, as if it somehow helped her dignity, her self-esteem to do so. It didn’t.
She rolled over on her side, nose pressing against the cushions. They smelled bad, but there was little she was willing to do about that, now.
Her mind wandered to the meeting they’d had, that afternoon. The first in the Bately Revolutionary Council’s sessions. She mentally shook her head, a faint smile on her lips. It was childish, really. Neeson had talked about explosives, hinted towards reclaiming their town. But could they really? The Warden’s men were so organised, so in control. Much of the initial enthusiasm from their clandestine little meeting had faded now, only to be replaced by a throbbing feeling of helplessness.
We’ll try our best. All we can do, really. But I’m not going to let them get away with what they’ve done, not if I can do anything about it.
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