Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘But do you trust them?’

  ‘No. No of course I don’t.’

  They both looked out across the campfire and the people sitting there, strangers all, even those they knew. They said nothing for several minutes as they listened to the idle chatter and to Sam’s heavy breathing.

  It was Mia that finally broke the silence. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t stay here, anyway.’

  ‘You, me, us, it seems we are all in this together now, Mia. We’ll go, all of us, just not yet. Some food and rest, and…’ Her words trailed off and she gazed down lovingly at Sam, her fingers playing through his hair. ‘He still sleeps like a child. I suppose that’s something.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  Albie nodded.

  ‘Are you okay, Albie?’

  Albie nodded again. ‘And you, Mia?’ Finally she turned around and looked her square in the eye. ‘Are you okay, Mia?’

  It was a loaded question, Mia knew. Albie wasn’t enquiring as to her well-being as much as asking if whatever evil had worked through her and showed itself to them at the hideout was gone from her. Were they safe? Were they free of this terrible, unspeakable bind that held them all together?

  Mia simply shrugged. ‘I can feel traces. It’s…’ She rubbed at the bandages on her arm, finding an itch. ‘It’s like a loud silence. I know that doesn’t make sense but that’s the best way I can describe it.’

  ‘None of this makes sense.’

  Mia smiled, even though she didn’t find the comment remotely amusing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mia. Honestly I am. I know you are a good person. I know it. Whatever is happening to you is not something I can blame you for, but yet I can’t help myself. But I also pity you, Mia. I am sorry, deeply sorry for whatever is happening to you. I don’t know what is real. I don’t know what is in your head, and I don’t know what I need to be afraid of, but I am afraid. I’m afraid for Samuel but I’m also afraid for you.’

  ‘You don’t need to be afraid of me.’

  ‘No, Mia. I said I’m afraid for you.’

  Mia bowed her head and began running her left hand over the bandaged index finger. ‘I have to go to Darkshines. I have to do this thing. I know I will never be truly free until I do. I need your help, Albie. All of you. Please.’

  Albie moved a hand under Blarney’s jaw and began to stroke and tickle his matted ginger beard. ‘How many people have you killed, Mia?’

  Mia found herself back in the carpet truck, sat there next to Sam, and she heard herself asking that young boy the same question and remembered being disgusted by him questioning why she wanted to know. Now here she was, only several hours later, yet a completely different person, someone who knew they no longer had room in their soul for that grey area of right and wrong, someone set down a path where murder – even if it was only to be her own – was the only destination, and she found herself rather grimly, and unconvincingly, replying with the same questioning answer. ‘Why?’

  ‘You are going to this Darkshines place to kill a man. In all this madness that simple thought seems to have been neglected. I just wondered how you felt about taking someone’s life. Do you care? This stranger, this Audley Thinwater, how do you feel about that? Even if it’s your life or his. Or all our lives or his, I just wondered how easy it is for you to kill someone?’

  Mia’s eyes had fallen on the sleeping boy under Albie’s left arm, the boy whose thumb had found his lips and who was now sucking on it like a baby on a bottle. ‘You do what you have to do to stay alive. Time. It’s all about time, that’s the most precious thing these days. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Albie said bluntly. She pulled Sam closer to her and the young boy moaned quietly. ‘You do what you have to do.’

  The steadily falling rain on the awning, the murmuring of voices and the crackling of the campfire were not loud enough to disguise the awkwardness of the moment. This time it was Albie who broke the quiet and spoke.

  ‘I dreamed about you Mia. About the others too, I think, but certainly about you. I always knew you would turn up in my life somehow. It was fate. You and I, somehow there is an inevitability about it all. If you believe in your dreams of course.’

  Mia looked out at the campfire, through the flames that seemed to reach and swipe at the air. Those empty faces sat around it, gazing into it, they were all being painted by the amber glow. The air around the clearing seemed to tighten and a chill ran through her as an old memory snapped at her mind and ate through her imagination. ‘My father dreamed how he would die,’ she said absently and then looked back to Albie with a reassuring smile that convinced neither of them. ‘If you believe that sort of thing.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me, Mia?’ Albie whispered.

  ‘Someone told me that people die around me,’ Mia replied.

  ‘Is that supposed to be some sort of answer?’

  Mia motioned to the two vehicles next to the tents, and Albie’s words floated past her. ‘You think we should take the ambulance or the car? I wonder where they’ve put our weapons?’

  2

  The man who had tried to offer Albie food was now distributing metal trays to those sat around the campfire, the same unidentifiable mush in each. Tommy dipped a finger into his and then sniffed it. Hector poked at the bread and flicked at a fly on the crust.

  ‘So, how long have you been here?’ Tommy asked Jarrow, as he wiped the brown mush from his finger onto the ground.

  ‘More or less since the start. We were greater in number back then, a proper community. I was a resident doctor at Our Lady of the Fallen Morality…’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Just a little joke. I worked in the hospital in City 17…’ Jarrow scooped a fingerful of the brown substance from his tray into his mouth, grimacing as he swallowed it, ‘now that is the real joke! City 17! How soulless and how typical of The Party. We are just numbers now. Statistical irrelevances. Those people have no heart. No emotion.’ He scooped up another bit of the food. ‘They started ransacking the hospital from day one. Antibiotics mainly, at first, that was before The Wash, before that lunatic thought he could cure us all, well, once he had sold The Party on that craziness, they started to clear us out of anything and everything he thought he might need for his brutality. Party Plod came and took it all. That was when I realised that enough was enough.’

  ‘What do you know about The Wash?’ Hector asked. ‘I’ve heard stories about what they were doing up there at Bleeker Hill. Some guy called Schaeffer?’

  ‘Ellis Schaeffer was the greatest doctor I ever met. I trained with him. He was a good man. Really, he was. I don’t know when that changed. I don’t know when he convinced The Party that he had the answers to stopping the madness. Maybe it was just self-preservation, maybe he just sold them a lie to buy himself some time. At the start. Either way he convinced them that he could wipe people’s minds. Remove the aggression and the rage. Reboot them, if you like. Wash them clean.’

  ‘They experimented on prisoners. I knew people who had done some time. I heard people talk about it,’ Hector said. ‘Guinea pigs.’

  ‘Then I guess they ran out of prisoners. You’ve seen the posters everywhere?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘They are selling the notion of sanctuary. But all they are doing at Bleeker Hill is culling. The Wash never stopped. They will keep on until they get what they want. Subservience. Empty shells that they can control and manipulate. Sometimes I see them carting people off, and I see the hopeful looks in their faces and I want to shout and scream at them and tell them that it is all a lie. But what good would any of that do?’

  ‘How do you know that is what they are doing at Bleeker Hill? How can you know?’ Tommy asked, nibbling away at his chunk of rock hard bread.

  ‘Information can be quite easy to come by, if you really want it. I have met Party Plod from time to time, those feckless scum.’

  Tommy’s body tightened, suddenly he
was all too aware of his appearance. His clothing was the regulation Party clobber; the boots, the combat gear, the black jacket, and at once he felt exposed and stupid for not thinking about it before. He gulped down hard on the bread and it felt like a pebble. Everyone’s eyes were on him, he knew it, and it was only a matter of time before they realised. Then what? Would he have to rely on the support of these strangers he had landed himself with, these people that wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire? The girl might defend him. Sure, she had the hots for him, apparently. But then the girl was also…Tommy dared not even think about Mia. Even the call of her name in his mind was enough to send a chill racing through him.

  ‘You must have too?’ Jarrow asked Tommy, and at first it didn’t register what he was saying. He didn’t see the escape route he had been searching for.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You must have met Party Plod on your travels?’ Jarrow was nodding at Tommy and looking him over.

  Hector leapt in. ‘Yeah, Tommy here got set on by a patrol. That was when we met him. Poor guy was in nothing but an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Thankfully one of the Party Plod took the same size boot.’

  Tommy nodded eagerly. ‘Yeah,’ was all he could think of to say. It seemed to be enough.

  Jarrow sighed heavily. ‘They wanted me at the start. I suppose there were other doctors too but Schaeffer had requested me. He wanted people up there at Bleeker Hill to assist him in his lunacy. That was when I knew I had to disappear. Even after The Party had ransacked the hospital we managed to keep going for a few weeks with a skeleton staff. We lost people, of course, but we had stockpiled enough medicine to save some. You do the best you can.’

  ‘You kept going there, even after…’

  ‘Of course! It’s my job. I took an oath. It was what we did.’ Jarrow nodded at one of the women sat around the campfire, a short, blond woman who was staring down at her tightly clasped hands. ‘My wife, Mary, a nurse. We stayed until there was no alternative. It was chaos. It was horrible. But no more so than anywhere else in the country I shouldn’t wonder.’ Jarrow shrugged, leaned forward, and ran a comforting hand over Mary’s shoulder. ‘Once Schaeffer had requested me I knew that I was of no use to anyone there any more. I knew that a patrol would come for me sooner or later and that they would give not one thought to Mary or to anyone in my care. So we gathered up as much as we could. There were five of us then. Me, another doctor and Mary, another nurse and an orderly, and we piled up two ambulances and my car, and we took who we could, and what we could.’ Jarrow waved a hand at the vehicles and then around the clearing. ‘This is what we have left. Things move on. We have lost people, but we gave them time. Sometimes we find others and we give them time too. Like you and your people. Even with the country the way it is now, you can still effect change for the good. You can remember what it is like to be human. I happen to think that you should. If you can. And right now we can, and we will as long as we are able.’ Jarrow stared up at the man who had served them food. ‘Malcolm here is the last from the hospital. He has been with us from the start. We gave him time.’

  Tommy looked at their waiter properly for the first time and couldn’t help but wonder if time was something this walking skeleton was cherishing.

  Jarrow held a hand out to the other woman. ‘Melissa and her children have been with us for a few months. Tell them your story, Melissa.’

  A thin looking woman with unnaturally neat hair, Melissa smiled at Jarrow and nodded obediently. Taking the hands of the child nearest her, a young girl, she started to speak in a tired, monotonous voice, free of accent and emotion. ‘There were coaches leaving the cities. Many coaches. My husband had heard a rumour of one leaving the next morning from around the corner from where we were staying. A hostel. We were staying in a hostel. He said we would hide out in a shop in the next street the night before so that we were ready when the coach came. He promised us that we would get spaces on the coach. So we slept in this old shop that had been ransacked. A sweet shop. He said he would keep watch whilst we slept and that he would wake us when the coach arrived. So my children slept and I slept too. When we woke up it was to the sound of my husband shouting. Screaming. He was really screaming. Not shouting. He had fallen asleep and now the coach was outside and people were pouring onto it. People were fighting to get on. My husband fought a man who was trying to push ahead of him. I made the children huddle together and hold each other’s hands and I stood behind them and we moved towards the coach. My husband got on and found a seat. There was such chaos. People pushing and shoving. A couple barged past the children and got onto the coach before us. Then the driver was screaming too and he was saying that they had to leave. They must go and people were shouting at him. People were shouting at everyone. The coach started and the door closed. The door closed onto a woman’s wrist and she screamed as well. I shouted at my husband. Shouted. Screamed. So much noise. I could see his face at one of the windows. He was looking at me. He was looking at all of us. He made no effort to get off the coach.’

  ‘Daddy was shouting at the coach driver man to drive away,’ a small, weedy little voice said from one side of Melissa. ‘I heard daddy shouting.’

  Melissa bowed her head momentarily and then raised it again quickly and patted at her hair, smoothing it down. ‘The coach left. My husband left. But my children are alive and I am alive.’

  The sudden sound of sobbing took Tommy by surprise. The unnamed man sat with them around the campfire had taken his hands to his face and was crying steadily. Jarrow reached out and rested a reassuring hand on his arm. ‘I’m so sad, doctor Jarrow. That story always makes me sad and angry.’

  ‘I know it does, Donald. I know. Your anger is justified. But you know the rules. No display of anger in front of the community. Do you need to be excused?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, please.’ Donald’s hands were leaving his face and scrunching into shaking fists. ‘Would you excuse me everyone?’

  ‘You are excused,’ Jarrow said and rubbed Donald’s arm lovingly. ‘And you young man?’ Sat next to the girl whose hands Melissa took for comfort during her story, a young boy was staring ahead at the campfire, his cheeks red and moist with tears. ‘Do you feel angry too, Henry?’ The small boy nodded slowly, unsure. ‘And would you like to go and be angry with Donald?’ The boy shrugged. ‘Then off you go.’

  Donald stood and took Henry’s hand. The boy offered his mother a quick, questioning look and she gave him a smile of consent. Donald led Henry from the campsite and disappeared into the darkness between the trees. Across the clearing, Mia watched them leave and then a second later she was up on her feet and backing out of sight in the wood.

  ‘God complex,’ Tommy whispered to Hector.

  ‘Fruitcake,’ came Hector’s whispered reply.

  ‘What was that boys?’ Jarrow asked, scooping up the last of the brown gunk from his tray and then shovelling it into his mouth.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You are questioning of how we run our community?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s your piece of the earth, doc. You do things how you want,’ Hector said.

  ‘We do. We do what we can to remain human. Because that is the only thing that will save this country.’

  ‘Humanity?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘No. Being a human. And with all the good and bad that it entails.’

  ‘Including anger?’

  ‘Anger is vital. As long as it is channelled into the right areas. As long as we focus on that and those that are deserving of it. Wouldn’t you say?’

  Hector and Tommy had nothing to say.

  3

  Mia walked through the steadily thickening trees, moving around the clearing, out of sight behind the tents, before picking up a pathway on the other side of the clearing about twenty yards behind Donald and Henry. They held hands, this tall, shuffling man and this tiny little child and they chatted like father and son on a Sunday stroll. The trees were a choking crowd of silent observers, and even the
rain struggled to find a way through to them, raindrops flicked and pattered against the leaves high above, occasionally swirling around in the ominously whistling breeze and tickling their faces, but the wood had become an awning of its own design.

  Donald came to a sudden stop and pulled Henry to him, crouching down to meet the young boy’s face. Mia ducked back into the trees and watched them from around the fat body of an old oak. The man was wiping tears from the boy’s cheeks with his thumb, and then he was hugging him close, the boy seemingly hesitant to go on further along this path.

  ‘You remember how you felt better last time? Do you remember when you got angry before, so angry that you wanted to scream, and then afterwards you felt good again? Do you remember, Henry?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I felt good again. But I feel okay now. I don’t feel angry. I just feel sad.’

  ‘And sadness often leads to anger. They are so close to each other.’

  ‘But I don’t feel angry any more.’

  ‘Of course you do, Henry. I can see it in your face.’

  ‘You don’t look angry any more either. You’re smiling now.’

  ‘Oh my dear Henry, I was never angry in the first place. I have heard your mother tell that story so many times now, as sad as it may be, I’m long past the point of letting it effect me. We all have our tales of woe. Yours is no greater than anyone else’s. But I saw you crying and I knew you needed to be angry. I wanted to help. I wanted to come with you and help you through. It’s better when you don’t do it by yourself.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Donald, but…’

  ‘You know, back when you were barely born, it was anger that helped destroy this country.’

  ‘Mummy told me that too.’

  ‘People got so angry at each other. With their own failings. And it had no direction, that anger. It was indiscriminate. Do you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘People get angry. People hate. You know how you hate your daddy for what he did? How he left you all alone? That’s common, that anger. We all feel like that from time to time. But if you don’t do something about it, it becomes like…like a poison…like an acid…’ Donald tapped Henry’s belly. ‘Imagine it like you are a great glass bottle and each time you get angry a little bit of this horrid, yucky, acid appears inside the bottle. If you don’t do something with it, it just slowly starts to build, trapped inside the bottle and then eventually that poison either eats through the bottle, or the bottle explodes. That’s when people get hurt. Sometimes people you love and who you would never want to hurt, and then you feel bad for what you have done. You remember when you hit your sister and you made her cry because you were so upset and angry? You hated that didn’t you?’