Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

Mia whistled once and Blarney came to her. On a second whistle she ushered him out of the door. ‘Let’s go then, Hector Frost. It seems I’m following you.’

  She knew Tommy was looking towards her now, but she didn’t turn back.

  ‘Wait!’ Tommy shouted. ‘They won’t let you leave the city…’

  ‘You’ve told me that.’

  ‘But if you do. I mean, if you can…if you can get out, get to the coast. Okay? I hear there are ships. People prepared to get you out. If you can get away, get there.’

  Mia nodded once, and then disappeared into the shadows.

  THE LIBRARY

  1

  Callie Frost was always trusting when it came to friends. Not in the sense that she allowed those she let into her life ride roughshod over her, and not that she was the sort of girl with such a sunny disposition that she couldn’t see the frauds of friendship past the cherished gems. No, for Callie the rules were simple – if you got past her barricades, and there were many these days, then you had her friendship, complete and total and trusting, without question. Callie was a good friend to have. Her only problem was that she expected others to have the same values. She had thought that Dean and Jo were two such people. Up until they ran out on her, she had been willing to believe that they would be friends for life.

  Dean and Jo were that Hollywood film version of the perfect couple; handsome and beautiful as defined by committee, and chiselled and curved in all the right places. Despite all that happened, the two never seemed to lose their clean-cut demeanours; their skin always seemed to glow, and their teeth still dazzled as white as snow. Callie knew that she and Hector happening upon this loved-up couple all those however-many-weeks ago, had saved their lives. Dean and Jo weren’t cut out for what the country had become. They clung to their love and their hope in each other and somewhere, deep in their soul, they believed that what was happening would soon stop and someone somewhere would tilt the country upright again and then everyone would go back to their normal lives. Sure, Callie would often think, if my brother and I hadn’t stumbled upon you in that old cinema (hiding from Party Plod on the back row of Cinema 3 would you believe?) then you would either be dead or banged up at The Hill. Callie never needed a thank you, or even any acknowledgement of it. She just needed their friendship and the knowledge that they would all stick together, this new fantastic foursome, and that they would face off everything together.

  At the very first gunshot from outside the library walls, Callie saw that she had been wrong about them all along. If only she could have had her brother’s more suspicious nature then maybe she would have felt less hurt. But did she want to be like Hector? Hadn’t he grown so cold over the previous few months on the road? He would tell her that that was how they needed to be now and probably deep down she knew that. But Callie Frost wasn’t done with what was left of her humanity. Not yet. Even watching Dean and Jo hightailing it towards the escape route that Hector had made for them all at the back of the library, she had felt fear for them before anger. Callie Frost was a good person. Anyone would tell you. “Fat lot of good it does her,” Hector would say.

  They had been deep underneath the library in one of the many large basement rooms that served as an archive and a record room. Rows and rows of battered books fought for space with index card drawers and a bank of broken old computers in the dark and musty maze that they had called their new home. Dust seemed to layer everything, and the one time Callie and Jo had decided to do a little spring-cleaning everyone had collapsed into sneezing fits. Spider webs covered the light fittings and the hidden nooks and crannies and the walls and floor were constantly creaking companions. The room had been untouched for months, maybe even a year of more, and there was a decidedly old feel to everything. Callie had loved it from the moment they found it.

  Up above, the main library couldn’t have been more of a contrast. An impressively grand, bullet shaped building that belonged in another time, its vast circular marble floor gave way to a network of metal walkways and steps that ran up and down and around giant walls, with two intersecting walkways crossing the middle of the library, just underneath a huge domed skylight. The curved sides of the building seemed to be made completely from books. Occasionally you could see little gaps between the shelves that led through the walls to unseen corridors and alcoves, all piled from floor to ceiling with a veritable treasure trove of literature. Both Callie and her brother had already lost days exploring the many hidden secrets the library still held.

  There had been others in their time there, not many, but some – a couple here and there looking for somewhere to ride out the trouble, or the odd stranger that stayed a night and then moved on. There had been a whole family at one point, but they disappeared without ever introducing themselves. For a few weeks a small group of kids had squirrelled away somewhere high above in the upper reaches of the walkways and on some of those nights Callie could hear their crying echoing out around the huge cavernous building, bouncing back off the domed skylight. She was never sure whether the cries were pleasure or pain. More often than not though, the four of them had the whole building to themselves. This great, untouched monument to a time that had long since checked its relevance out at the door, but yet still stood belligerently untouched, seemingly waiting until it was safe to rise again.

  They spent most of their time down in the dusty maze, far below and out of sight, only going up above during daylight hours, and when one of them worked watch. They had originally decided that this should be every night but their conscientiousness had slipped. They had been safe there, untroubled and fairly untouched by the madness. When the first shot rang out, further down the road, in the apartment building next to the barber’s shop, they had just stared at each other, wondering what the heck it was. The second shot got them to their feet, and on the third Dean began pointing back up to the upper floors with a wayward finger, and then started stuttering a gibberish that Jo translated.

  ‘Party,’ Jo said to Callie and then nodded to Dean. ‘Pick-up. Outside.’

  Callie shrugged and returned to her makeshift bed of lost coats.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, Callie?’

  ‘So what? There’s been pick-up’s before.’

  ‘Guns. Party people. Outside with guns. Shooting.’ Dean said the words in short blasts, his finger jabbing at the air above him as if he were pressing an invisible button.

  ‘Well they’re not coming down here are they? Relax.’

  ‘What about Hector?’

  ‘What about him?’ Callie propped herself up on her elbows and stared between the lovebirds with the calmest expression she could muster; aware that relaxing and keeping calm was not something Dean and Jo did easily. They were going to be this way until the pick-up picked up and pissed off. Callie had settled back into the role of the calming mother, a charade she had often found thrust upon her. She and Hector had frequently become mum and dad to Dean and Jo, and in another world, with someone other than her brother to play the part, Callie might have enjoyed the role. ‘Hector will be fine. He’ll keep out of sight until they go. He knows what he is doing.’

  ‘So do they.’

  ‘He won’t get caught.’

  ‘What if he does?’

  ‘Give it a rest, Jo. They aren’t coming down here.’

  The next shot came from down the road like a muffled firework, one quick, dull crack, but it was loud enough to send Dean ducking to the ground, and enough for Jo to leap forward and take her loved one in her arms. Callie slumped back to her coat bed and stared at the ceiling. She listened to the pops and cracks and knew that she could hear screaming too. There was also now conspiratorial whispering coming from across the room, and she suddenly felt very alone. When she finally sat up again, Dean and Jo were already gathering their belongings.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Callie stood up and stared across at her friends in disbelief. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘I’m not waiting in here to be s
hot,’ Dean snapped.

  ‘We’re getting out of here, Callie. You should too.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re walking into. Don’t be so stupid, sit…’

  They had already turned their backs to her and were bustling away, laden down with everything they could carry. Dean and Jo, those dear friends for life, lives that Callie and Hector had saved, turned around a bookshelf and disappeared from view. The sham of their friendship, trailing behind them, was the last thing that passed through Callie’s mind. Then there was nothing at all. There had always been nothing at all.

  ‘A strange concept…friendship. A tenuous notion. A fragile thing.’

  The voice was cold and smooth, the words dripping down at her like melting droplets of ice. Before she could react to the noise, or consider that the shadows around her seemed to be shifting and hugging her close, a knife found her throat and a bony hand, her hair.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Callie spoke into the empty space before her where those two old strangers had once been. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Ssshhh now, be quiet, Callie. Be quiet. Silence in the library.’

  2

  Mia and Hector watched Dean and Jo exiting the back of the library, not through the escape route that Hector had so diligently fashioned so that a line of wheelie bins would mask you from sight until the turn in the street, but actually through the huge metal double doors that served as the library’s delivery entrance. The doors screeched against the pavement but neither of the lovebirds seemed to notice or care. The gunshots that were now coming from somewhere above them were all that was on their minds. Dean and Jo scurried out of the doors and into the small road behind the library, their worldly goods on their backs and wedged under their arms.

  Mia could sense the panic in Hector on seeing his friends. He had started to move out from the truck they had been hiding behind as soon as the doors had opened, but Mia had dragged him back and now held him by the scruff of the collar, his face pressed into the warm metal of the truck’s cab.

  ‘Your friends, I assume?’ Mia asked.

  ‘My sister…I need to find my sister.’ Hector was fighting against her hold but even with one hand, Mia had the edge on him. ‘Why isn’t she with them? Please, I have to find her. Please let me go!’

  ‘Shut up!’ Mia whispered into the side of Hector’s face and then with her free hand moved her rifle out around the side of the truck. She had seen the blur of a body jump the roof from the apartment block next to the library, and now the gunfire was building, growing in intensity.

  ‘Please, Mia. I need to find Callie!’

  ‘I know you do, Hector.’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  The answer came around the side of the road to their left. Dean and Jo were suddenly turning on the spot and running flat out in the other direction, everything they owned falling to the ground in a series of clangs and bangs and thuds. Two men, rifles in hand, were charging down the street behind them, one firing up to the roof of the library, the other, straight through the backs of love’s young dream.

  Mia felt Hector quiver and shrivel against the side of the truck. Even with his face pressed against the cab, she knew he realised what had happened and that his mind was painting him grotesque pictures in the most lurid colours.

  ‘Let me go! I need to find my sister. Get your damn hands…’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hector.’

  Mia pulled Hector’s head back and slammed his face into the side of the cab. As Hector slumped back to the ground, dazed and disorientated, his two bags of swag a waiting cushion, Blarney stepped forward and rested himself across Hector’s chest, the warning growl already blooming in readiness.

  Mia took the rifle against her shoulder and dropped to her right knee, as she moved out around the truck. The two Party Plod were in the same stance, now both firing up to the top of the library. Mia could hear shattering glass and looked up to the roof just as the huge domed skylight seemed to evaporate and cave in on itself. A rifle clattered to the ground just behind the men, and then a split second later there was a hideous crunching thud as a body joined it. The two men spun around, startled, and both lost their balance momentarily. It was all Mia needed. Her first shot sent a bullet through the shoulder of the shooter that had taken Dean and Jo down, and then her second and third, unleashed in rapid fire succession, went through the right kneecap and left arm of the other. Mia was up and at them in a flash, striding across the road with a quick sweep left and right, and then introducing both men to the butt of her rifle. She gathered up their weapons and sprinted back to the truck.

  Hector was gazing blearily into the fixed hazel eyes of Blarney, not quite registering what they were. There was blood under his nostrils for the second time in a day, and again he could taste the familiar dull tang on his lips. As his senses stumbled back, his hands moved around in front of his face and found his four-legged guard’s wet nose and then his twitching ginger beard. Recognition suddenly rushed at Hector along with the putrid Blarney breath.

  There was one quick whistle in front of him and then the intent gaze of Blarney was suddenly replaced by Mia’s backside. She was leaning into the cab of the truck, a rifle slung over each shoulder, their butts clunking together as she wriggled in through the window. Hector pulled himself to a seated position and gazed beyond the truck to the three bodies of the Party Plod on the road. In that moment he had forgotten all about Dean and Jo.

  ‘You know how to use this?’ Mia was now standing in front of him, pocketing the truck’s keys with one hand and holding a rifle to him with the other.

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘You might want to learn. Let’s go, haircut.’

  Mia dragged Hector to his feet and then led him across the road towards the open doors at the back of the library. Blarney was already ahead of them, weaving back and forth as he caught a scent, his tail quivering as his jaunty little backside found its swagger.

  3

  Jacob Silence saw it all. Mia was caught inside his mind, her each and every action a fat fly stuck in the web. He saw Hector, Frosty, and he saw the dog. Those friends of Callie’s that had run out on her, he saw them fall to the gunshots of Party men. The images were vivid and colourful but Silence knew he was missing something.

  Mia won’t kill. Why won’t she kill?

  No. It wasn’t that. Silence was intrigued about the girl’s motives and actions, but the fact she refused to kill was not what was troubling him. He pulled his left hand tighter in Callie’s curly locks and then the name came back to him. Sam. Sam. Sam…

  The boy was falling.

  Silence was watching him.

  The girl was watching him.

  Silence had got Callie out into the main library and was just crossing the plush marble floor, when the huge domed skylight caved in high above them, shattered by the force of two bodies and a steady barrage of bullets.

  4

  Sam was aware of firing the last of the two bullets in his pistol. He knew his first attacker was hit, that the man was swaying at the edge of the roof and gazing down at the steadily growing blood patch on his chest. He knew the second attacker was still charging at him, that the man’s rifle was out before him and that he was running out of options. There were gunshots coming at Sam from all angles, from in front and behind and even down below on the street. He remembered jumping at the man. He remembered coming together with him. Then he knew that he was falling.

  Sam was turning over in the air, aware of the sudden shift in pressure, the change in noise, and then for a split second there was nothing, just as there had been when he jumped the roof. Only now, time hadn’t stood still, time had disappeared all together. Sam found himself in a blackness that seemed to open up for him and offer its never relenting hold. He saw a jagged hole of sky and then the blackness drew its cover, and for several moments there was nothing else.

/>   The walkway across the centre of the library was a good twenty feet below the skylight and Sam hit it hard on his right side, his pistol once more fleeing free of his hand, this time never to be reclaimed. His attacker landed a second later, further down the walkway, slamming against the handrail with a dull snap, and then slipping off down into the emptiness below. Sam felt glass shards shattering all around, heard the tinkling beneath him, a perversely gentle sound, and at first he found himself unable to place the noise. To him, the falling glass sounded like the jingle of an ice cream van.

  He came back in stages. First it was footsteps on the marble floor far below that stirred him. Then a girl was screaming, a man shouting, and then he was rolling onto his back on the walkway and looking up at the sky through the decimated skylight. It was a beautiful blue. Ocean blue. Unreal. He turned onto his left side, and looked down. The glass twinkled and glistened against the marble floor. There was a trail of blood running through the tiny diamond-like fragments, giving to a couple of dark red footprints. He saw the seemingly endless rows of books, the metal walkways running up and down the walls, connecting up to where he now lay, and bit by bit, time took him back through the last few minutes, picked him up and moved him on. He heard two heavy doors being opened, sighing wearily at their hinges, and then there were more footsteps, heavy boots stamping across the floor, and more shouting voices. He saw a man he thought he recognised, someone he had seen diligently picking away at his fingernails with a penknife. He thought he heard a dog barking on the other side of the building but he knew that couldn’t have been the case. Sam moved onto his back again and once more looked up at the hole of sky above him. All he could think in that moment, that brief respite before the chaos, was that he had no idea where his aunt’s stupid, effeminate bag was.

  5

  Hector moved first, charging out into the library, and the shock of it made Mia lose a few moments reaction time. She had been so sure Hector would have been no use in such a situation, that he would have been more likely to cower on the floor than throw himself into a fight. She had debated how necessary it was giving him the rifle in the first place. She even had a quick thought that he might be so useless that he would be more likely to shoot her than any Party members. Or worse still, Blarney. As it was, Hector Frost left Mia standing and ran towards Jacob Silence and his sister without a second thought, an anguished warble of rage booming out into the great cylindrical shaped building. Of course, he hadn’t noticed Jack Raizbeck and the three Party members with machine guns, standing by the main entrance. He had other things on his mind.