Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘And now you kill her. Like I told you to. Go on. Get on with it.’ Raizbeck sauntered over to the small writhing body of Porter at the edge of the cliff leaving Tommy alone with Mia, stumbling over words that wouldn’t form, frozen like a statue with the gun against her neck.

  ‘Jack…help me, Jack…’ Porter pawed at his boss’s boots.

  ‘Kid hit you bad, Porter.’ Raizbeck looked down at the tatty rags of his colleague’s trousers and the bloody, blasted wounds that were weeping red through them. ‘Sorry, Porter. You know I am. We all are.’

  ‘No…Jack, please…’

  ‘The Party owes you a great debt. The Party loves you.’ Raizbeck stepped forward into his friend and with a gentle push of his boot, Porter’s hands fell away, and his boss rolled him over once and then let him drop unceremoniously over the edge of the cliff, a scream falling with him before being cut off abruptly by a hideous, thumping crunch a few seconds later. Raizbeck turned to Tommy, his hands back at his face, delicately fingering the hole in his cheek.

  ‘Fine way to treat your friends,’ Mia said towards the ground.

  ‘You should see how I treat my enemies, Mia. Speaking of which, I can’t help but notice that she is still standing, breathing and very much alive. Tommy, why are you so intent on failing me?’

  ‘You don’t really need me to do this. It doesn’t have to be me. Why do I have to shoot her, Mr Raizbeck?’

  ‘Because I want her dead. Why do you think?’

  ‘Why do I have to still prove myself to you? Why? I’ve done all you asked of me. I brought her here like I said I would. I brought her to Storm Tail.’

  ‘Compliance is one thing, Tommy. But it is nothing when compared to trust. There is little more valuable in this world. Your father knew that, as much as I hate to admit it. You should know it too. We need people we can trust implicitly and without question. Yet I still find myself questioning you, Tommy. So now you answer me. You answer me by shooting her.’

  ‘But…but this is stupid…’

  ‘Everett?’

  Behind Mia and Tommy, Everett had now drawn up over Sam, his thick boots either side of the young boy’s head. ‘I got it, boss.’ Everett raised his machine gun towards Tommy’s back.

  ‘Put her on her knees, Tommy. Do it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Do it! Now! Get her on the ground!’

  With a timid whimper, Tommy shoved Mia forward, and pushed her down to her knees. ‘I don’t need to kill her, Mr Raizbeck. I don’t need to do that to prove myself to you.’

  ‘Yeah, Tommy. Yeah, you really do.’

  Sam was moving now, pulling himself up to a seated position behind them. Everett’s left boot found his chest and pushed him back, the heel digging into his ribs. ‘Sit down, boy.’

  ‘You want a count of five, Tommy?’ Raizbeck’s lips, the bright, bloody red of a clown, were turning upwards in a sly grin. ‘I will give you a count of five.’

  ‘Stop this, please! You don’t need to do this!’ Albie’s shouts brought Fallon’s hand across her face, but still she came on, jerking away from the man that stood over them, spitting blood as she shouted again. ‘Don’t do this Tommy! You know you don’t want to do this!’ Fallon moved to hit her again but Hector shoved his arm away. The big man’s beefy arm swung back casually from over his shoulder and then his bunched up fist cracked firmly across Hector’s chin.

  ‘One!’ Raizbeck shouted.

  ‘No!’ Tommy screamed back. ‘I’m not killing her. This is unfair. This is stupid.’

  ‘I gave you the gun, now kill her, Tommy! Two!’

  ‘Please, Mr Raizbeck. I’ve never let The Party down. I’ve always done what was asked of me. Always. Like my father did.’

  ‘Then do it again now. Three!’

  Mia turned her head up, looking over the gun in her face, finding in the man that stood over her, the handsome boy she had first seen in City 17, what felt like a lifetime ago. There was such beauty in that troubled face. His inability to harm her made her want him, started a thrilling ache inside her that made her skin tingle, and the old scar on her right arm throb. In that moment she wanted to kiss the life out of him. As they both dangled on the edge of their stories end, Mia would have declared love for him if that face had looked down at her.

  ‘Four!’

  Tommy spun around quickly, his right leg barging into Mia and knocking her aside. ‘No!’ He shouted the word three times at Raizbeck, each one louder than the last, and then unleashed a scream of primal gibberish up into the sky. To Mia it made perfect sense. In that one brief moment before the hollow click of the gun hammer, she had clarity enough in her mind to find comfort in the beauty she had seen. The last thing she would see in Tommy Bergan would be goodness.

  ‘Five…’ Raizbeck spoke over the frantic click-click of the empty gun that was now pointing straight at him, that clown-like smile thinning to a tight line. ‘Stupid young fool. You really think I’d give a loaded gun to someone I didn’t trust? And how right I was to doubt you. I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m sorry that you turned away from us. But without trust, we have nothing. Right, Everett?’

  A long tongue of orange fire lashed from Everett’s gun, as Tommy was suddenly launched forward, his feet carrying off the ground in front of Mia’s face as bullets sliced through his back. The noise was so loud in Mia’s ears that when Tommy’s body thudded onto the road in front of her, she was spared the sound of the impact. There was now nothing but a slightly metallic ringing in her ears, a sound that seemed to be trying to burrow into her like a termite. Lying to the side of the muddy path, Tommy looked like a scarecrow tossed out for the rubbish, there didn’t seem to be any form or definition in him. Tommy Bergan had been used up and spat out, and now someone was blocking her view of him, speaking to her, and she heard only muffled noises. She found herself turning her head to the side, searching out her friends, but a hand took her by the chin and yanked her face back. Jack Raizbeck was there in front of her, bending down and talking words she didn’t hear. Her eyes drifted to the bloody mush on his cheek. She wanted to punch a fist through it. She wanted to hurt him and hear him scream. There was a fire inside of her, crackling along her limbs, raging, building to an inferno, and she had no way to douse it, nor any desire to. It was going to consume one of them.

  ‘I said, do you know why I want you, Mia? I asked you if you had spared even a moment to really think about why I had to find you. Answer me!’

  She heard some of the words, but not enough to make any sense of them. ‘Why do I want you?’ Raizbeck shouted. ‘Why did I have to find you?’

  ‘You have found me…’ Mia blabbered the words towards his chin and then felt her face being pulled up again, moved to within kissing distance of Raizbeck’s bloody lips. ‘You think I killed people. I didn’t kill anyone. It wasn’t me…’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I haven’t killed any of your people. I didn’t kill anyone at Bleeker Hill.’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘I’m innocent.’ She sounded drunk, her words slurring together, barely identifiable. ‘I didn’t do it. You can’t judge me.’

  ‘You really had no idea did you?’ Raizbeck beckoned to Everett behind her. ‘No reason you should I suppose. I’m all too aware of how you view our work. I couldn’t expect you to consider the greater good of what we are doing.’ As Everett drew up alongside him, Raizbeck hunkered down at Mia’s side and gently whispered in her ear. ‘I don’t care what you did back up there at Bleeker Hill. I never have. It’s what we were doing there that matters. It is all that matters. I needed to know, Mia. I needed to know if we had finally succeeded. I need to know if what we all hoped we had achieved was real. I needed you to confirm it because you are the only person who could. I needed you to meet test subject 171A.’

  The words found her and this time they fitted together, but still Mia didn’t understand. Even when Raizbeck moved away and left her staring up at Everett it took a moment for what he had been saying to
penetrate her tired mind.

  The truth was clawing at her like a half remembered dream that was urging her not to wake up yet. The truth was an icy wave that subdued the raging fury inside and pushed her deep under an old imaginary ocean. The truth was a voice coming to her from miles away. The truth was the face of the stranger before her, distorted and unreal, staring down at her as she desperately tried to break the surface.

  Yet he wasn’t a stranger.

  Mia would never forget that sad face and she would never forget what he did for her at a place called Bleeker Hill. She would never forget his name either.

  His name was Sullivan.

  11

  Mia let the light grey morning go and embraced the darkness that searched her out. She let the deep sea of her subconscious swallow her up and did not fight it. She had no fight left. Her defeat was before her, her manipulated journey at its destination. She was hollow and weak, her heart was frozen, her muscles like chipped glass, teetering on the edge of shattering. No more. No more.

  But someone was talking to her, some voice was inside her and not allowing her to drown. Someone was pushing at her to come back, and now the floor was moving in front of her eyes, the coast road a blur of greys and blacks, and then the hard set rocks of the cliff edge were there as a hand wrapped itself around her ponytail and yanked her up and out of the deep, bottomless sea that she had given herself over to. Now Mia was looking out over the cliffs, towards the diluted baby blue sea that stretched out from Storm Tail cove under the first rays of a new morning, and Jack Raizbeck was behind her, holding her at the edge.

  ‘Beautiful isn’t it?’ His voice had calmed perceptibly, yet still had found no warmth. His breath was in her ear, and it felt as cold as ice. ‘So many have come here over the months looking for a way out. It’s a lie that we were happy enough to perpetuate. The need to escape is a strong pull for so many.’ Raizbeck tilted her forward, leaning her over the cliff edge as his right hand tightened at her hair. ‘We gave people the option of a new life, those that prefer this fantasy are welcome to die at the end of their own stupidity. Makes no odds to us.’

  The rain was weakening, thinning out and moving away, and now Mia was looking down at the thin cut of beach that ran around the middle of the cove. The scattershot black shapes dotted around the base of the cliffs had been large rocks to her friend’s eyes, but in the pale streaks of dawn, Mia could see what they had not. The black rocks were bodies. Many bodies.

  ‘There is no escape, Mia. For any of us.’ Raizbeck pulled her back upright and forced her head around to her right, making her look towards a small sailboat out on the sea, moving slowly out of the cove. From where they stood, Michael and Abigail’s boat was little more than a black smudge across the weak blue. ‘Those that came with your friends, look at them, look at them, Mia. They have no escape either. Where do they think they can go? What do they think is really out there on the horizon?’

  ‘What have you done?’ Mia’s throat was parched and felt rough as she spoke. Her eyes were raw but no tears escaped. She had finally cried her last. ‘You evil, son of a bitch, what have you done to him?’

  ‘Be quiet, Mia. Don’t talk. Just watch. Watch and then understand.’

  She could feel the steely taste of blood in her mouth, her broken voice seemed to make every new word a self-inflicted wound. ‘Sullivan…’ Mia gagged and then spat a glob of congealed bloody mucus out over the cliff edge.

  ‘His name is Everett now. He knows no different. At least that is what we believe. We couldn’t be totally sure until he saw you again. He has no family any more. He doesn’t have anyone else. Just you. You are the only person he could recognise from the life he had before.’

  ‘You’ve killed him.’

  ‘No. Not at all. Quite the opposite actually. We’ve saved him. We’ve rebooted him. We built him up again from scratch. I even taught him how to drive. He was a blank page. He is our success. He is our proof that The Wash works. He is the first. Everett is our poster boy. Quite literally so. I’m sure you’ve seen the posters and the billboards. He was so happy to do it, so happy to do anything for us. He would die for The Party.’

  ‘And all those hundreds that went before him?’

  ‘This country was killing itself. Were we ever expected to right it again without sacrifices? We are saving this country from itself, Mia. There may have been a time where a helping hand might have stopped the fall, but that is long gone now. This country tore itself apart. The only way to start again is by going back to the beginning. Create it all again. Don’t you see, Mia? Don’t you understand what we are doing?’

  ‘You’re playing God in a godless country.’ She tried to look back to Sullivan, to her friends, but Raizbeck’s hold was too strong, her position at the edge of the cliffs, too precarious. She could hear Blarney’s relentless barking coming towards her now, and something chipped off from her frozen heart. Raizbeck pushed her to the left.

  ‘I want you to watch, Mia. I want you to understand.’

  For a few moments she saw nothing but endless sea, that glassy, smooth water that reached out forever before her, but then something flittered on the horizon, a small shape moving out towards them from the hazy blur where the sea and the sky became indistinguishable. At first it was no more than a black speck, about the same size as the sailboat out on the water, but as it lifted up and moved against the pale sky, the speck became a blob, like a giant bird of prey had swooped out of the dawn and was now gliding towards them. Further inland it came, sweeping over the blue in a purposeful, direct line, homing in towards the sailboat.

  Knowing came at Mia a few seconds later, just before she heard the chopping sounds of the attack helicopter’s rotor blades.

  ‘There is no escape for any of us, Mia.’

  Chop-Chop-Chop

  The gunfire was a heavy thumping sound, even from so far out at sea.

  Chop-Chop-Chop

  The small smudge that had been the sailboat was ripped clean from the cool blue, shattered, broken, and disintegrated, as if it had never been there in the first place.

  Chop-Chop-Chop went those helicopter blades in their dull monotony.

  ‘There is no escape, Mia. Not for any of us. This island is a prison now. Now do you see? Do you understand, Mia?’

  Chop-Chop-Chop

  ‘Sometimes, on a really clear day, you can see the great, grey ships on the horizon.’ Raizbeck was pointing out past the retreating helicopter. ‘Warships in some areas. At least I hear there are. We always expected them to attack. But they never did. Containment seems to be the political move of choice at the moment. Quarantine. Let all us filthy animals kill each other instead.’

  Chop-Chop-Chop went her father’s voice inside her mind. A younger voice for younger ears. Mia had found an old memory, something dredged up from the bottomless sea. She heard a nursery rhyme she vaguely remembered, her father whispering it in her ears in a playful singsong voice, close to laughter. His daughter refusing to sleep until she heard his voice, saw his face and felt his reassuring kiss. Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Reassured, comforted and humoured, that young girl slept and then her father’s laughter was her own.

  ‘So now you tell me, Mia, you tell me what else I should do.’ Raizbeck swung her around from the cliff edge to face him, his machine gun clanging between their two bodies. Taking his hand from her hair he clamped it instead around her jaw, fingers digging in, nails cutting the skin. ‘What other steps should I be taking to repair this country if not those that I am already taking? Tell me that, Mia! Tell me!’

  ‘You should start by taking two steps forward Mr Raizbeck.’ Mia laughed darkly and then jerked her head down and bit through the soft skin in Raizbeck’s hand between thumb and index finger. Raizbeck howled as Mia turned against his weakening hold and slammed her right hand side into him, knocking him backwards. In one swift motion her left hand was suddenly at her bandaged right, tearing and ripping and
exposing her scarred arm, and then Mia was prising free something hidden there under the bandages. Raizbeck was coming again, but Mia was ready. Her left hand swung up in a fast arching movement, and then, before Raizbeck even had time to raise the machine gun, the broken blade from Jacob Silence’s knife was forced through his throat. Mia grappled the machine gun free as he sank to his knees in front of her, two huge saucer eyes staring up at her in affront and amazement.

  12

  Sam was ready. Sam had been ready from the moment they had arrived at the cove, and as soon as Raizbeck had dragged Mia over to the cliff edge, he had been waiting for Mia to present him with the chance.

  Both Fallon and Everett were all too keen to see what Raizbeck was going to do with Mia and the men’s distraction was Sam’s opportunity. Everett stood his ground, barely shifting from where Raizbeck had summoned him, a look of bewilderment set in his face. Fallon continued to hold Albie, Hector and Callie at the end of his machine gun, pacing around in front of them like a prowling tiger, whilst throwing intermittent glances over his shoulder to the cliff edge.

  Sam had seen Mia’s pistol poking out from the back of Tommy’s trousers as soon as he fell, and he knew that was where he had to get to. Somehow. Tommy lay sprawled out just off to the side of Everett, about ten yards behind Fallon. He could get there, and get there quickly, but he couldn’t outrun either man’s gunfire should they be given chance enough to fire. He needed the others. Glancing to the three of them sat off to the side of the road, each bloodied and bruised by Fallon, he saw instantly that the same impossible thought seemed to be passing through them all. He could see the fury alight in Hector’s eyes, he could see Callie’s hands clenching together as if they were already around Fallon’s throat. The Frosts were ready to fight. The Frosts needed to fight.

  Sam then looked past Hector to Albie, to a face that was impossible to read. She looked neither angry nor scared. Her face seemed empty. But then, suddenly, as if some inner instinct or voice was telling her she was being watched, that face turned to Sam, those empty eyes found him, and Sam’s beloved aunt Albie gave a slow and purposeful wink before turning back and retaining her expressionless watch. They were ready. They were all ready, and when they fought they would fight as one. For one blessed moment, Sam’s heart swelled with love at that thought.