Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘How many? How many will be enough?’

  From the barber’s shop there was now the sound of splintering wood. The guard advanced another step. Something hit the front door to the shop and then almost instantly the door was tilting forward, relieved of its hinges, and falling gracelessly to the ground with a hefty thud. The guard leapt forward, into the growing dust cloud now blooming up from the pavement, and roughly barged past the hooded man as he jabbed his rifle forward into the gaunt, ghostly faces of three men, standing in the open doorway.

  ‘Every last living soul,’ Raizbeck said over the guard’s head. ‘If that is what it takes.’

  The hooded man spun around quickly on the spot, and in a blur of coat and a quick flash of metal, unsheathed a hunting knife from a holster on his belt and buried it into the guard’s back. The crumpled poster skewered on the blade. The guard slumped to his knees and then bowled forward, onto his face. The hooded man snatched the knife free, turned on his heels and then a few seconds later he rounded the corner of the last shop in the road and disappeared from view.

  Raizbeck turned casually to the open doorway of the barber’s shop and the bony, half starved bodies that were standing there, gawping at him with questioning, fearful eyes.

  ‘Come, get something to eat,’ Raizbeck said to them in a friendly, reassuring tone. ‘It’s okay. Nothing to be scared of here. The Party loves you.’

  2

  Sam was watching the unfolding events on the street below from the relative safety of the third floor of the apartment building next to the barber’s shop. He was crouched in a corner of some stranger’s bedroom, peering around the side of the one dirt caked window in the room. The apartment he had squirrelled away in was dank and dreary, stripped of most of its fittings and fixtures. Mould and mildew had infested the walls and the floor was a hopscotch game of holes and splintered wood. He had found little food in the kitchen cupboards – some tins and packets of powdered soup, but nothing to get excited about. He had just been about to head down to the next floor when the trucks had pulled up below, and when they did, all thoughts of the necessity of food became very much a secondary consideration.

  He knew there were others in the apartment building as soon as he arrived. He could hear noises behind doors, could feel eyes at keyholes, staring out at this young kid and his stupid, effeminate bag. Finally he had caught the eye of a couple in the flat across the hallway. They had just been standing there in the doorway as if they were about to pick the papers up from the floor and offer their neighbour a how-the-heck-are-you? They had all stared at each other with the same conspiratorial glint. The couple had smiled that same half-smile that Sam himself knew he always gave whenever he met anyone on a food run. That anyone would still feel guilt, embarrassment almost, at stealing whatever food they found was patently ridiculous. It was a free for all now. Since the country had fallen it was all about what you could get and how long what you found would afford you. You lived day-to-day, steal-to-steal, there was no secure place, and there was no assurance. Just an impossible freedom that was as terrifying as it used to be aspirational. But as much as this new life was a constant fight, a relentless grind that chewed up and spat out those not strong enough for it, it was still, for Sam, infinitely preferable to what was playing out on the street below.

  He knew of The Party. He had heard the stories about The Wash. He was clued up to their sham. His aunt had made him all too aware of what they were about, and made sure it was a trap he would never fall in to. Now, watching those helpless looking souls shuffling out to the trucks down below, and those men with guns coming to meet them with bowls of soup, Sam felt the cool grope of their touch and shivered from shoulder to ankle. His hands were sweaty, clammy, and the small pistol was starting to feel like a block of ice in his hand. He knew there were only two bullets left, he knew that fighting his way out of the apartment block would be a hopeless task. He had no choice but to wait it out in this new, bleak cell he had happened upon. At least it was a sunny day, he thought to himself and then laughed gently into the wall.

  He was still laughing when he felt the person at his side. They had got to him silently over the holes in the floor and the squeaky cacophony of the warped wood, and now they stood over him, like a shadow come to life. Sam swung the pistol out to his right, jabbing it into the shape. A second later his head followed around, his eyes coming alive and piercing through shadows that seemed to leer at him.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ It was a woman’s voice, a fear soaked whisper that seemed to float over his head, dragged out of the gloom. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Please. Please, don’t shoot us.’

  Sam’s eyes fell through the shadow, and the woman’s shape was slowly coloured in before him. To her side was a man, cowering at her shoulder, his hands wedged deep in the pockets of an outsized coat.

  ‘Please…’ she started again. ‘Please don’t shoot us.’

  ‘Take you hands out of your pockets.’ Sam moved the pistol to the left, aiming it at the man’s midriff. ‘Slowly. No sudden moves. Hands out. Now!’

  The man seemed shocked to be spoken to but did as he was told, two limp, pale hands rising up from his coat and then flopping hopelessly at his side. It was then that Sam realised he was talking to the couple he had seen across the hallway not an hour earlier. At the recognition his finger relaxed from the trigger and he moved his back up against the wall. The woman stepped forward and tried to look from the window. Sam shoved her back into the shadows.

  ‘No. Don’t do that. Don’t let them see you.’

  ‘But why? They are Party members, aren’t they?’

  ‘You just answered your own question.’

  ‘But they are here to help. Haven’t you seen the posters?’

  Sam had, of course, it was impossible to walk the streets and not see them. They were on every other lamppost of every street, in shop fronts, on car windscreens and scattered about on the ground. That was even before you got to the huge advertising billboards that had started to spring up on the edges of towns and cities and out in fields alongside the roads in and out. But when others saw the posters as a large hand of charity, Sam saw a devious beckoning finger instead. The Party had no idea about help or comfort. It was as out-dated a notion to them as freedom was. But it was an easy con to fall for, and therefore an easy trap to spring. There were still enough people in this crazy world prepared to trust. With so many people at the end of their rope, many still wanted to believe The Party would save them. Sam knew that all they would do instead is kick the chair away.

  ‘They are not here to help. It’s a trap.’ Sam spoke the words quietly, aiming them at the open doorway just visible between the man and the woman. ‘Don’t believe them. Don’t trust them. Keep out of sight until they go. Don’t let them see you are in here.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Why would they lie?’ The woman sounded incredulous, almost amused. The man was nodding and grunting his agreement.

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Trust you? Trust a stranger and not the people in charge of the country?’

  ‘They are not in charge of anything.’

  ‘But they are trying to mend things. Get things back to how they were.’

  ‘They have no interest in mending anything. They control. That’s all they do. They control what they can and kill what they can’t.’

  ‘How long have you been doing this?’ the man asked, his left hand finding the woman’s right and squeezing it tight. ‘How long have you been walking the streets and pinching mouldy food and scraps from bins? How long do you want to keep doing that? Can’t you smell that down there? That’s real food. When was the last time you had proper food? More than one meal a day?’

  Sam had found the soup smell wafting up from the road outside just as easily as the man and woman. He remembered those smells and they reminded him of his aunt, of the food she would cook for them in their little hideout in the country, at least at the start.
At the start of all this, food had been plentiful and he still remembered those smells perfectly. The idea of eating real vegetables again, and maybe crusty bread too, warm food and nourishment, he fantasied about those things now – but a fantasy was all he allowed it to be. He saw the other side of the dream. Five minutes of pleasure was nothing compared to whatever nightmare The Party would bring for dessert. “Much like my first marriage,” his aunt had said to him as a warning. Sam found it easy to resist The Party’s taunts and tricks, he had always done so, and he would again now. His aunt had taught him well.

  ‘Have you heard of The Wash?’ Sam asked the doorway between them.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Well, yes, exactly, we need a wash too,’ the man said. ‘That’s another reason we should…’

  ‘No…’

  ‘I can’t keep doing this,’ the man continued. ‘I can’t have my wife living this way. I won’t put her through this. We need food and shelter. We need to be clean. They say they have shelter at Bleeker Hill. Why wouldn’t you want that?’

  ‘Why would you care either way? I’m just a stranger.’

  ‘We’re going down to them. Come with us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you frightened of?’

  ‘Just go, if you are going. The sooner they have filled up those trucks the sooner they are gone. So go. Go and good luck.’

  ‘But this is silly…come with us.’ The woman was bending down to Sam and reaching for his arm. Sam jerked away and then turned the gun back towards her. The woman rolled back into the shadows. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do you have family with you?’ the man asked.

  ‘I have an aunt. I need to get back to her.’

  ‘Bring her too. They say they are building a new community up there. Somewhere safe for everyone. Come on. Come with us.’

  ‘No.’

  Sam said the word with a finality that wasn’t lost on the man and the woman and then turned back to the window, peered out from the bottom pane, through the small circular sight he had rubbed into the dirt earlier, and said no more. When he looked back five minutes later, the man and the woman had left, departing the room with as much silence as when they had arrived.

  ‘Idiots,’ Sam said into the shadows of the room. Looking back to the window, down to the trucks and the men with guns, he saw the man and woman exiting the building, hand in hand. He could make out the smiles on their faces, the relief that was in their happiness, happiness that can only come from making a decision in a world without instructions. Sam had seen it before in so many people and he would see it again. People wanted to believe. “People are idiots,” his aunt always said.

  He waited another half an hour in the gloom of the bedroom. He found himself silently pleading to the trucks and the men to go. To pack up their ridiculous sideshow and roll out to the next town or city or wherever else the gullible were hiding out. But they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He had seen so many people climbing up into the trucks; men, women, children, all greedily spooning the soup into their mouths and holding the bowls out for more, that he felt sure the trucks must be full. But yet they didn’t seem in any hurry to move off. A man was sat on the open tailgate of the truck nearest the barber’s shop examining the dirt under his fingernails, picking at them with a penknife. Sam hated the man’s calmness. To him it seemed like arrogance. A quick two fingers to all the poor, starving bastards trundling out to him with their arms open. Sam needed no confirmation of his suspicions about The Party but he wished he had pointed him out to the man and the woman when they had been unwilling to heed his warning. “There is no room for vanity in charity,” was one of his aunt’s favourite sayings.

  Still the minutes passed and the trucks didn’t move. The steady stream of people leaving the surrounding buildings had thinned and then stopped. No one else was taking up the hand of friendship today. A couple of the guards had mounted one of the trucks and Sam felt sure that they were soon going to be driving away. The man on the open tailgate had pocketed his penknife and now just stared ahead, gazing off down the main street into the city. Three guards approached the man and he merely flicked a hand out to them, seemingly trying to brush them away. The three backed off from the truck and then turned to face the apartment block. For what felt like the longest of seconds they too didn’t move, and then, one by one, they walked forward and disappeared from Sam’s view.

  Sam got to his feet, trying to shift position at the window, but no sooner had he stood and stretched his legs, trying to force the cramp away, than he heard voices coming up through the blasted floor beneath him. Someone was shouting something incomprehensible, someone else was screaming. Sam turned quickly and caught a foot in one of the holes in the floor, tripping himself up. Just after he thudded clumsily onto the fragile wooden floor and felt his gun fly out of his grip, he heard another booming voice come up to him from far below and he could make out the words as clearly as if they were being shouted into his ear.

  ‘Sweep the floors! Clear this building!’ the voice was demanding in a deep, bellowing blast.

  3

  Sam heard their heavy footfalls on the staircase as he turned out of the apartment and began to beat a path along the corridor. As he passed the last apartment before the turn that would take him up to the roof, he saw a young girl huddled in the doorway, her face smeared in dirt, small pale arms out before her, reaching to him, pleading to him. He turned away and ran on, mumbling an apology under his breath, and then clattered through the fire exit door.

  He bounded up a set of small metal steps that led to the door to the roof, and suddenly the door looked impenetrable, ominous and foreboding, a sheer metal wall that would never give to the likes of him. He pushed down at the handle harder than he needed but there was give instantly and he tumbled out into the sunshine. He took a moment to catch his breath and gather his surroundings, looking out across the rooftops of the southern quarter of City 17 and yet seeing nothing but the sun, that unforgiving glare, that searching spotlight that seemed to be looking down on him, wondering what he was going to do next.

  A gunshot stirred him back. It was the old familiar crack of a rifle and it came from the floor below. He instantly saw the girl in the doorway again in his mind, and then quickly shook his head, scolding himself for allowing the thought. Any thought. He was on his feet by the next gunshot and by the time the shooter was standing in the doorway to the roof, Sam was in full sprint, charging like a madman to the edge of the building.

  A shot whizzed past his ear at the very moment he leapt from the roof. In that moment, those mere seconds that he was gliding through the air, everything seemed to hold its shape and he felt like he was stuck there. He even had time to consider his stupidity. He had no idea how far the roof of the next building was, couldn’t judge the force of the jump, or what or who was waiting for him in the next building. He had learned to work off instinct and never to hesitate. His aunt had taught him that in a world without rules, it was a better idea than actually having a plan. “Just keep one step ahead. Where you see them, you go the other way. Never think and never pause. It’s all about time. That is all that matters now. Getting time.”

  He hit the roof of the next building hard, overshooting the tiled lip of the edge and colliding with the side of a large domed skylight. The gun, once more, was skidding out in front of him, threatening to fly off over the edge of the roof. Sam landed on his left knee and felt a sharp pain reverberate up his leg and into his hip, then he was on the move again, not allowing time to contemplate whatever he had just done to himself, thinking only one thought, needing only one direction; get away from the enemy. Get time.

  Another shot came at him but missed by quite a distance. Sam turned on the spot, pushed himself down and then grabbed up his pistol. Flinging himself onto his side, he looked back to the roof of the apartment block and then met the gunshot with one of his own.

  4

  Hector spent the first ten minutes of the car journey
trying to find a way of avoiding Blarney’s breath. The ginger beast – as Hector had instantly come to think of him – was sat bolt upright on the back seat, his head firmly placed in the space between Hector and Mia, and he was panting relentlessly. Even with the car windows open there was no escaping it. Hector had tried wafting at it with a hand and that had prompted a deep, rasping growl from the backseat, so he had pulled his shirt up over his nose instead, inhaling his own rancid perfume.

  Hector had said very little to Mia as they walked to the car. He had asked her name again, where she was from, what she was doing there, all the usual perfunctory small talk, and Mia had given little more than a grunt and a shrug of the shoulders in return. Hector hadn’t pursued it. He let the onus for chitchat fall on her, and it wasn’t until they hit the side road that she had ordered him to take, that she decided to pick it up.

  ‘Keep right,’ she said, pointing across Hector towards another road further ahead. ‘Keep off the main roads. How many ways in do you know?’

  ‘A few. Done this route enough times. I can get you in without anyone seeing us, don’t worry.’

  ‘Are you from City 17?’

  Hector laughed. ‘Still feels weird calling it that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. What’s in a name?’

  ‘City 17. Sounds so impersonal.’

  ‘It is. The cities always were. So is The Party.’

  ‘The Party loves you, Mia!’

  ‘Not so much, Hector. Not so much.’

  They laughed awkwardly, between them Blarney yawned and then rested his head on the back of the passenger seat.

  ‘Where are you from, Hector?’

  ‘We’re from the capital.’

  ‘The capital? Sounds so impersonal, wouldn’t you say, Hector?’

  Hector chuckled to himself. ‘Okay, I’ll give you that one. We were there when it all happened. Became pretty obvious that staying there wasn’t a great idea so the family rolled out. We had some cousins up this way so…well, worth a shot, right? Got to be somewhere safe. That’s what we thought. Can’t really say for sure how long we’ve been here. Time sort of…you know?’