Dark Side of the Moon

by Les Wood

  Kyle screamed with rage. Already smoke was streaming into the room via the ceiling space and the crackling of flames could be heard up there.

  ‘Holler all ye like,’ said Leggett. ‘It adds to the whole experience. Ah’m enjoyin it, Ah really am.’ He held a finger to his chin, striking a thoughtful, considering pose. ‘In fact, Ah’ve got an idea. Why don’t ye tell me what ye’re feeling? What’s going through yer head right now? Now that ye know ye’ve not got long left. What does that feel like?’

  Kyle punched the door in fury. ‘Bastard! Ah’ll ram my fist into yer plooky face so hard ye’ll be shitin teeth for a month.’

  Leggett gave a sardonic laugh and shook his head. ‘No ye’ll not, ya tosser. This is it for you.’ He leaned close to the glass, cupped his hands to his eyes to get a better view. ‘Is it gettin warm in there? Feelin toasty?’ Leggett giggled. It didn’t matter who heard him. Not Kyle, not anyone. Not now that he was so close. Finally, he was going to see it, after all this time it was really going to happen; Kyle was the ‘man in Reno’ and now Leggett was going to watch him die. Holy mama! He felt like dancing. Dancing for joy and gratitude, giving thanks to a God who was so generous.

  Kyle had to scramble against the wall as the suspended ceiling at the far end of the room collapsed with a crash, sending smoke and cinders rolling in a black wave along the floor towards him. He heard Leggett whoop on the other side of the door. Kyle could see roaring flames in the space between the ceiling and the concrete roof, licking through from the corridor beyond and hungrily probing into the office. He began coughing, choked by the dense smoke, but he stared through streaming tears at the flames, gripped by what he could see up there; there was something… something.

  It was a last chance.

  ‘Woo-wee!’ yelped Leggett, clapping his hands. ‘This is where the fun really starts. Oh mama, Ah love it!’

  Fuck this, thought Kyle. He ran over to one of the desks and pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer. He tore a couple of pieces of Sellotape from a dispenser on top of the desk and ran back to the window.

  ‘Get it up ye,’ he shouted, and taped the paper to the window, cutting off Leggett’s view.

  Kyle was surprised to hear Leggett actually howl. ‘Nyaaaa!’ he cried. ‘Naawww, ye can’t do this! Not this time! Ah want to seeeee!’ Kyle allowed himself a smile, pleased to hear the defeat in Leggett’s voice.

  But he had to move quickly. He could hardly breathe, and the heat from the flames was fierce. He dragged the nearest desk across the floor and jammed it against the door. He went back to gather a smouldering chair and placed it on top of the desk.

  ‘What are ye doing in there?’ Leggett shouted, a catch in his voice. ‘Why are ye movin the furniture?’

  Kyle said nothing, but climbed onto the desk and then onto the chair. Spluttering and gagging, he reached up through the smoke and pushed aside one of the ceiling panels. He shone his head torch into the space.

  He was right.

  It was what he’d seen through the flames at the other end of the room. The breeze blocks above the door didn’t extend all the way to the roof. There was a small gap – two feet, no more – below the concrete of the floor above. Small, but large enough for a man to crawl over and into the space above the corridor outside.

  Another crash close behind him signalled the disintegration of a stationery cupboard in a spray of sparks and embers. Kyle quickly hoisted himself up into the ceiling space. The metal rods and supports which were the loadbearers for the ceiling panels groaned and buckled under his weight, but held fast.

  The fire was twice as ferocious up here in the enclosed space and flames shot in brilliant, flaring arcs towards him, sucked on the powerful air currents from the wind tunnel he’d created by the removal of the ceiling panel. Kyle felt the fire lick at his legs and he frantically pulled himself over the breeze blocks above the door. An awful, scorching pain enveloped his legs and he knew his trousers had caught fire. He kicked out desperately, an involuntary series of spasms, trying to get his legs away from the terrible heat and pain.

  He cried out in agony, an anguished primeval yowl of terror and despair.

  It was answered from below by a braying laugh from Leggett. ‘Yeeeooww! Oh man, you go for it, give it laldy big man.’

  Kyle hauled himself over the brim of the low partition above the door and launched himself onto the ceiling on the other side. He smashed through the panels and crashed to the floor below, sending Leggett springing away in horror.

  But then Kyle made a mistake. Landing awkwardly, he stumbled to his feet, his instinct to get as far away from the fire as possible. As he rose, the flames from his legs leapt up greedily to engulf the rest of his body, setting his jacket ablaze. Leggett backed away screaming, horrified by what he was seeing. Kyle staggered towards him, wildly flailing his arms about his chest in a futile attempt to douse the flames.

  In the depths of his mind, in the inner kernel of his soul which existed far beyond the pain and torment he was experiencing, Kyle knew his time had come. The universe remained steady on its axis and he felt the empty void of eternity, cold and vast and pitiless, yawn before him.

  He swung around and his arm made contact with the retreating, terrified Leggett. In a last act of defiance (a last act of any kind, he knew now), he lunged forward blindly and caught Leggett in a bearhug. Leggett’s screaming spiralled upwards in a wordless crescendo of panic, fear and, now, pain. He struggled frantically, kicking and thrashing against Kyle’s relentless flaming grip. Kyle’s hand sought out the carabiner which still dangled from the harness around his waist. He fumbled the mechanism open, hooked it into one of the belt loops on Leggett’s jeans, and snapped it shut.

  ‘Now,’ he said through the flames which engulfed them both, ‘Now you can see what it’s like.’

  ***

  Boag ran up the grand staircase to the second-floor gallery. Behind him he could hear the yells of the firefighters as they finally broke through into the blazing sales area. Minutes before, he had watched horror-struck as the twins slipped from the top of the Arrow, plummeting soundlessly, hand-in-hand, to crash to the ground five floors below.

  It was all his fault. The explosions, the fires. If Boag hadn’t been so keen to demonstrate his technical prowess and ingenuity by adding that wee bit extra ‘spice’, things wouldn’t have got so out of hand. What had he been thinking? His own private recipe, a subtle mixture of nitrates and phosphates, a little bit of sugar, packed into cigar tubes and secured to his explosive rigs, had seemed just the ticket to offset the shitey obsolescence of the Rastahman’s detonators. A bigger bang for your buck.

  Aye, well they had got that hadn’t they? A much bigger bang. And the fires that went with it.

  If he was being rational about it, he knew it was Leggett’s fault, not his. The explosives should never have been used; there was no need, everything had been going well until he showed up (and where the fuck did he come from anyway?). It was yet another Leggett fuck-up.

  All that was academic now. It didn’t change the fact that people had died; the twins certainly, and what the hell had happened to Kyle? Why hadn’t he appeared at the top of the Arrow along with Campbell? What had happened up there?

  Boag had no time to worry about these things now. He’d lingered long enough.

  At the top of the staircase, he raced along the right-hand walkway of the gallery; to his left, the gallery was a confusion of blazing handrails and stanchions, melting wall-mounted displays cascading onto the floor like a Dalí painting. Boag was confident the firefighters hadn’t seen him; they were too preoccupied with getting their hoses into place and establishing a plan of action to notice him sprinting along the balcony above their heads.

  He burst through a set of double doors and ran towards the green fire exit sign at the far end, each pounding step jolting the crushed meringue of his nose. Twice he slipped in the water pooling on the polished floor, skidding and floundering to regain his balance.

 
; He slammed into the fire-escape door, grateful to finally be free from the broiling hell of what remained of Trusdale and Needham.

  He was thrown back onto the floor. Confused, he got to his feet and pushed the door again. It didn’t budge.

  ‘Aw fuck!’ he shouted, kicking the door. ‘What now?’ He pushed and rattled the doorbars, heaved with all his might. Nothing.

  He looked up at the ceiling, took three deep breaths and closed his eyes. There was one option. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘For once in yer life, take control. You know what ye’ve got to do.’

  He fished in his pocket and brought out the last of his cigar tubes, the one he’d kept back as a spare, packed with his patented nitrate-phosphate-sugar mixture. It would be enough to blow the door, and then some.

  In the breast pocket of his denim jacket he had a couple of receipts for the clothes he had bought with Boddice’s advance; he took one and rolled it into a thin cylinder. He unscrewed the lid of the cigar tube and inserted the paper cylinder into the powder inside. He was aware of the incredible risk he was taking – the mixture was extraordinarily unstable, so much so he was surprised it hadn’t already gone off with all the falling and stumbling he’d been doing.

  Gently, he rested the cigar tube against the base of the fire-escape door. He went back into his pocket and brought out the old woman’s lighter and struck it. He smiled as it lit first time. He studied the grotesque face and the words – La Guerre – written below. Not for the first time, he thought the expression changed as he looked at it. Almost a conspiratorial wink, a knowing acknowledgement of complicity. What the hell was that?

  Fuck it, he thought. He lit his makeshift taper and ran for cover.

  He only managed a few steps before an almighty blast threw him head over heels into darkness and silence.

  PART 5: SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

  Nobody’s Fault But Mine

  Prentice sat alone, upstairs at the rear of the number 39, hot and slick in the heat of the late morning. He wondered if this was the same bus. Was this the exact spot where wee Jackie (or whatever her real name had been) died? He remembered her tight little face, screwed up against the world, the tick-mark scratch on her cheek. He gripped the back of the seat in front, hands in knuckled knots, jaw clenched. He couldn’t allow himself to think about her. Not yet.

  There was business to attend to first.

  ***

  After he’d left Trusdale and Needham, he strode across the street to Central Station and found an empty bench in the main concourse. The station was quiet, just a few stragglers waiting for the late trains and the sleeper to London. A pair of ragged derelicts wandered as aimlessly as the stump-foot pigeons on the station floor, barely bending their knees as they shuffled from the closed newsagent to the centre of the concourse and back again. Prentice held onto the armrest of the metal seat and rocked back and forth, muttering and cursing under his breath. A middle-aged woman, bleached hair that didn’t so much look styled as hacked into random clumps with a razor comb, stared at him, assessing him, her mouth working incessantly on her chewing gum. Prentice gave her a back-off scowl and she retreated towards the Costa shop.

  Prentice forced himself to calm down, gulping deep breaths and directing his gaze to the floor. Now that he’d finally done it, defied Boddice so blatantly and completely, he knew things were going to change. He was on his own now, and, sooner or later, Boddice would be coming for him.

  He had no idea how long he sat there, staring at the floor, finding meaningless patterns and structures within the cracks and irregularities, the glazed flakes of stone, embedded in the tiles. When he finally looked up he saw a crowd of people gathered at the side exit from the station onto Hope Street. Necks were craning and bodies jostled for a better position. A railwayman in a fluorescent yellow jacket sprinted from the station office to join them. The rest of the concourse was deserted; everyone seemed to have gravitated to the exit passageway.

  Prentice stood, and wandered over to see what the fuss was, gradually becoming aware of the distant sound of sirens and alarms as he approached. He frowned. What was going on here? He pushed his way through towards the front. Two cops were holding the crowd back to prevent them from spilling onto the street. Prentice pressed his back against the wall and snuck along the edge of the throng, ducking under the blue and white tape strung across the entrance.

  ‘Hey, you,’ called one of the cops. ‘Get back here.’

  Prentice pretended not to hear and walked steadily down the street towards the store.

  Ahead of him, the sky was lit up in a brilliant orange glow and smoke billowed and boiled in rolling black clouds into the air. Flames leapt from broken windows high above, while fire-fighters ran in a confused rabble amid the blue strobing lights of the tenders. A great screaming roar came from the tortured ruin of the Trusdale and Needham building, almost as if the structure itself was crying out in pain.

  Prentice stopped in his tracks, slack-jawed. Jesus Christ, he thought, what in the name of fuck has happened? Even from this distance he could feel the intensity of the fire. He stepped back into a recessed doorway, kept out of sight and watched as the fire continued to rage out of control.

  They were in there. Kyle, Boag, the twin, the McKinnon woman. Somewhere in that inferno, they were… what? Trying to get out? Trapped? Dying? Already dead? Or had they already managed to escape? Prentice somehow thought that was unlikely. This looked much more than just the result of Boag’s little diversionary explosions. He brought out his mobile and keyed Kyle, then Boag and the twin. Each time the same message – The number you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later.

  He looked up. Something was happening. The fire-fighters were regrouping, retreating further up the street, pulling back. There was shouting and running. Prentice sensed an air of panic about their withdrawal.

  One of the fire-fighters, a woman, ran past his hiding place in the doorway and, by chance, glanced in his direction. She skidded to a halt and grabbed him by his arm, pulling him away.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ she yelled. ‘Come with me. Hurry. It’s coming down.’ She yanked him forwards, almost sending him stumbling to the ground. He regained his balance and looked over his shoulder as he ran back to the crowd at the station.

  The copper spike that supported the Bubble began to bend in the middle, buckled by the heat from the fire. The Bubble itself swayed precariously above the intersection below. The cables and struts strained and groaned against the shifting weight. Prentice jumped as one of them sprang free from its mooring on the wall with a colossal whipcrack. The cable snapped up into the air and lashed against the sides of the neighbouring buildings, bringing down masonry and glass onto the road below. The Bubble tipped to one side, shuddering and bouncing on the remaining cables which struggled to accommodate the weight. The spike warped further, flexing and twisting, the whole structure complaining with a grinding metallic screech. An awed hush settled on the crowd as they watched further cables snap and tear away from their anchor points.

  The Bubble lurched downwards and recoiled as it reached the limit of the final few cables which still held. It swung in a wide circle for a few breathless seconds before the cables finally gave out, their severing signalled by three loud cracks which rang out over the thunder of the flames. The Bubble collapsed to the street below, a slow-motion descent through the last twenty feet, landing in a tangle of girders, glass and smoke. The ground shook beneath their feet.

  The crowd gasped and someone near the back broke into applause. ‘Quality, man,’ cried a high-pitched voice. ‘Pure quality.’

  A fireman ran up the street towards them, waving his arms. ‘Get back, get back!’ The gable wall of the building, weakened by the collapse of the Bubble, started to bulge along the edge adjoining the corner, accompanied by a deep, almost subsonic, rumble. Huge sandstone blocks came free from the wall, crashing down to the street, crushing and flattening the cars below, and sending clouds of dust into the air to joi
n the smoke and flames. A series of loud booms ricocheted along the street as vertical fissures opened up in the wall, red flames licking through the gaping wounds in the stonework. The façade of the store fell away with a long, ear-splitting roar which echoed through the dark canyons of the city centre. As the wall came down, the floors of the building caved in, tumbling like a spilled deck of cards. Beams and trusses, walkways and gantries, thrust up and out in crooked shards, backlit by the raging inferno beyond.

  Prentice blinked, unable to take it all in. No that wasn’t quite right – unwilling to take it all in. This is fucked, he thought. So fucking fucked.

  He turned and barged back through the crowd and continued up Hope Street, fighting against the rising tide of rubberneckers emerging from the pubs and clubs, eager to see the free-to-view spectacular at the store. He kept walking, robotically marching through the streets, step after step, eyes fixed ahead, not stopping till he arrived at his flat, finally slumping onto the sofa to sit in the dark in a glazed stupor. How had it come to this?

  He sensed his life crumbling around him, a collapse as catastrophic as that of the Trusdale and Needham building. Everything had changed. Nothing was going to be the same again. It was his own stupid fault for listening to Boddice. And now the price was paid. Kyle, the others, all gone – he knew in his heart they hadn’t made it – and for what? To satisfy Boddice’s greed and lust for money and power?

  Fuck him. The words spat in his mind. Fuck. Him. Prentice began banging his head against the back of the sofa, emphasising each word.

  Fuck him.

  Fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck him.