And with hope came another sharp stab of feeling.
With all of this, the constellations, the birds, trees, moon and night, the body of Todd Devlin at his feet in the dirt, Johnny Lisker was desperately lonely.
He missed his little soldier.
- PART SIX –
- CLEANING OUT THE NEST -
- 92 -
Andy McKenna spent much of the following morning working liaison between the Home Office experts and his own local police; a job he hated from both sides of the coin.
They had been forced to covert two rooms of the old youth block into temporary morgues, and a third into a quarantine area for thirty seven bodies they had recovered from the carnage of The Watersedge Restaurant. McKenna didn’t pretend to understand what they meant with their fancy jargon. The bodies weren’t dead; though vital signs were at a minimum they were very much there. They were comatose and in some form of gestation or metamorphic transformation.
They were dying in handfuls by the hour, their weakened hearts unable to withstand the abuse being dispensed by their accelerated metabolisms.
Someone had said they were going through some form of induced hibernation, which was all the explanation Andy needed. They weren’t going anywhere. He had other things on his mind.
His stomach felt like a circus ring full of tumbling performers, belly acrobats and trapeze artists. His mouth was painfully raw, the chewing gum he had been ruminating for the past hour dried up. He couldn’t very well get rid of it now.
He took his seat at the long table beside two of the Home Office authorities and the local environmental big wig; McKenna knew all about this one particular publicity seeking mongrel but just this once was happy to let the politician steal the limelight, fielding the press’ barrage of still unanswerable questions.
“Paul Sheridan, BBC Local News. For the benefit of everyone, would someone care to explain exactly what happened here last night?”
“And could it happen again?” someone else shouted.
McKenna felt the burn of the camera lights in his eyes. He very nearly pitied the politician – but then he saw the smug smile, the hands part and heard the pat answer trip off the weasel’s tongue.
By the end of the briefing he was feeling sorry for the vultures.
- 93 -
Todd Devlin’s body was found shortly after sunrise, suspended from Hangman’s Oak. His head had been jammed between the two lightning-split staves.
A cavity had been hollowed out of his stomach and much of his insides were missing.
- 94 -
Jack Kemp led a second raid on Havendene, arresting Jennifer Nolan and the rest of Richards’s employees. Ben Richards’ files were raided; his own notes on the N.E.S.T. virus and antitoxins confiscated along with evidence found to back up Kristy’s claim that Judith Kenyon had indeed been held on the premises against her will. Though no one was prepared to admit that any one of the three wrecks of humanity that they found beyond the security doors on the old stable was her, they each had their own ideas.
Jack filled his report, stating that: on discovering a modern research lab, they were confronted with three cages each containing a living thing. The three creatures were put down humanely by lethal injection administered by a Home Office veterinarian, though it is my belief that the creatures were in fact missing fell walkers Judith Kenyon, David Gilanders and his son Colin. We are awaiting DNA substantiation.
- 95 -
Frank Rogan was found by two officers, dead in his chair inside the old farmhouse.
Neither officer reported in for work the next day.
As a precautionary measure both families were brought in to quarantine for observation. Within twenty four hours three of them, the two officers and one child were showing early symptoms of what Richards had christened the E-motion virus.
These three were isolated and their blood tested for toxins and antibodies.
A second child proved to be diabetic.
At no time did she exhibit symptoms of the Foundation-Slave viral strain. Data from the girl was cross referenced with data in the files provided by Kristy French and subsequent tests on Barney Doyle, another diabetic who had resisted the contagion.
A vaccine that worked on the Ketone principle was tested – when glucose intake is low proteins and carbohydrates are broken down to make more glucose. However, because all of the body’s reserves of protein would quickly dwindle away, many tissues switch over to using the products of fat breakdown as an alternative source of fuel – flushing acid waste through the patient’s body by breaking down the fatty tissue into fatty acids to stimulate ketone formation. The ketones are produced and transported into the circulation to be used as energy by the muscles, heart and brain.
The effects of the Ketone vaccine were both immediate and radical. The progress of the N.E.S.T. virus was arrested in its incubation period and all three showed signs of recovery.
- 96 -
Cleaning up the streets lasted nearly a week, removing the burnt out husks of dead cars, cleaning out the rubble and shoring up fire-wrecked houses. More than one hundred and fifty people were rendered homeless, though each and every one of them refused to take even temporary residence in houses left empty by dead and dying rioters.
The air, soil and water supply was tested for trace levels of Richards’ virus. After the clean-up and removal of bodies, the area was considered safe to inhabit.
- 97 -
Evie’s death affected Barney Doyle profoundly. He put the boathouse restaurant on the market, with no real hope of attracting a buyer and tendered his resignation from the Police force. He was offered instead the opportunity to take up early retirement on full pension.
He stayed in the old house, living in the dark spiritually and physically, waiting to die.
- 98 -
After evacuating the survivors the Home Office authorities instructed the military to seal off all adjoining land and sent in audio-visual units to record the devastation.
When the cremation fires had finished and the corpses littering the streets had all been collected, examined and sent to the fires, a press release was formulated in which it was stated: on the night of Wednesday 16th May 2007 violence erupted in the rural Northumbrian village of Westbrooke which resulted in large-scale damage to property and the loss of life.
A full scale investigation headed by Lord Chief Justice Beckman Q.C. was later announced.
- 99 -
Kristy French walked out of her final interview with the authorities, sat behind the wheel of her Citroen and drove from Westbrooke into the old market town of Hexham, parking in a bay outside the General Hospital. She sat behind the wheel and counted slowly to ten and back down to zero before getting out of the car.
She had to stop at the reception desk to ask where his room was. Fittingly, she thought, waiting for the lift, he hadn’t been moved from the High Dependency Unit. The sound of her footsteps echoed as she walked, clipped, precise and angry. A ward nurse she half-recognized walked by, offering a tight smile of professional courtesy as she went.
Kristy took the turn into the HDU passing the small reception area with busy orderlies and a chattering sister ruling her own little roost with a rod of iron. Kristy walked with her borrowed confidence, and no one challenged her right to be there. She had no idea what she would have done if they had; pleaded a close friendship or an urgent need to see the doctor?
Where others had flowers and glazed vases beside their bed, a gaunt saline drip played guardian angel for a comatose Brent Richards. Around it, smaller, squat bulks of white chrome cherubs hovered, shapeless boxes covered with unmarked screens and crisply labeled switches – life givers linked by wires and cables, struggling to keep midnight from collecting its dues. She told herself he was living on borrowed time anyway.
Gauze pads and bandages covered Richards’ blind eyes so Kristy had no way of knowing whether he was awake or asleep. For what she had to do asleep was better.
She wa
lked to the bank of plugs on the far wall, bent down and tripped the power switch, effectively killing Brent Richards by starving his life support of electricity.
Kristy walked back to the bedside and sat in a green plastic chair.
“For Jason,” she whispered into his ear. She hoped there was enough left working inside the doctor for him to understand exactly why he was dying. She owed Jason that much.
Kristy waited until she was sure he was dead, powered the machines up so they hit the flatline and triggered the alarms, then strode confidently back to her car, not once looking back at the crisis she had left in her wake.
- JOHNNY’S FALL -
Ben Shelton walked away from the old school house, turning to stare down the slope, his gaze drawn fatalistically to the rooftop of the restaurant at the watersedge. Looking at it, he felt a little out of touch, a little insane.
He couldn’t think about it. It was behind him, and what could he tell anyone? It was a virus and normal, everyday Joe’s like me that wiped out this sleepy little village in the Tyne Valley. No, the inner city rioters had got the situation pretty well covered. No one was going to believe him – this was being firmly laid at the feet of listless unemployed youth gone wild. It was sickening enough to kick start the Short Sharp Shock lobby for another few months, keep Joe Public in the bureaucrats’ pockets where they didn’t need to think too much.
He turned away from the old building, disgusted with himself for going along with it – but he couldn’t see any way for one man to fight against it. He cannoned into Jack Kemp as he ran hellbent for his squad car. Jack was another one finding it increasingly difficult to bite his tongue.
“Where’s the fire?”
“I wish it was a good old fashioned fire, mate,” Jack said, unlocking the black and white’s door. “Johnny Lisker’s been sighted entering the paper mill. Lucky old me, I’ve drawn the short straw. That jumped up little Hitler from the Home Office has assigned a Tactical Fire Unit for fuck’s sake. Lisker doesn’t stand a chance.”
- 100 -
Johnny was scared and it was probably the most intense emotion he had ever suffered.
One by one he’d been forced to listen to the tiny demons dying inside him while he’d wandered the gauntlet seeking out his little soldier.
He looked at his reflection in the barrel of a pipe and even distorted he didn’t need a genius to tell him he was wasting away. There were no links left. No demons. No Little Soldier. And Johnny was alone. He hadn’t fallen. Hadn’t succumbed to the plague in his veins.
He was in the tunnels, both mentally and physically. Burrowing into the darkness of Longrigg, looking for new hope between the gantries and the rails, wood, scaffolding and piping. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his body exhausted. There was very little of Johnny Lisker left, even in terms of skin and bone.
He ran on, a blind and deaf man, deeper into the tunnels, looking for the light, shouting for the demons. For the voices.
Johnny wasn’t going to start writing himself off yet, but he was haunted by the very unreal sense of falling; his clothing was soaked and heavy, every step a trial, his mind forcing his legs into stumbling, not allowing the luxury of rest. His eyes were open, stinging as he blinked. But he kept on going, up like an angel.
- 101 -
Ben watched them take up positions, their black uniforms and grim expressions making them look like ghosts of Nazi stormtroopers gathering in the dusk, and he watched Johnny swing arm over arm up through the gantries, his eyes feverish, face scarred. Tears streamed down the boy’s face, but his teeth were clenched with something near hate.
Ben refused to be party to murder. He broke away from the line of armed police and started to climb up the gantry behind Johnny, his weight causing the platform to swing dangerously. He heard Jack yell at him to stop being a fool, but shook his head and kept on climbing. Let them shoot me as well, if they’re going to.
Ben scaled the scaffolding gantry behind Johnny, keeping his neck craned upwards so he physically couldn’t look down the forty foot fall to the floor.
“Johnny, Johnny son, come on. Come down. Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’ve got stuff in the village that will kill the infection in your blood. You’ll be fine in a couple of days. Come on.”
Johnny swung dangerously, only holding on by the fingers of his one good hand.
“Are you an angel?” he asked, in all seriousness. Ben shook his head. “Are you a devil then?”
“No, lad. I’m just a man. I can’t fly and I think I’m scared of heights. Let’s go back down, please.”
Johnny’s fretful glance down to the ground told Ben he wasn’t going to trust anyone he didn’t have to.
“You won’t . . . you won’t let them hurt me?”
The rational fool in him wanted to say “No, Johnny, they won’t hurt you,” but he felt out of control, and he couldn’t promise anything of the sort when he knew full well they were ready to take the kill shot. Ben reached out a hand for Johnny to take. Johnny looked like a little boy now, the menace taken away.
The sound of the shot came just as Johnny reached down to grasp his hand. The bullet took him in the side of the head. For a moment, Johnny seemed to hover in mid-air, only his feet touching the gantry. Then he was gone, torn away by the wind.
Three screams echoed each other. Ben Shelton’s, Jack Kemp’s and worst of all, Johnny Lisker’s, torn from dead lips by the speed of the fall.
- EPILOGUE -
- CATCH YOU FALL -
MEET THE AUTHOR: KRISTINE FRENCH WILL BE HERE ON SATURDAY AUGUST 21 AT 1:30 TO SIGN COPIES OF HER NOVEL DEEP WHISPERS, SWEET DECEITS.
Ben limped across the area known as Grey’s Monument, steering little Evie’s buggy through the congregations of pigeons, shoppers and street corner preachers. Different snapshots of Kristy’s face occupied much of the huge plate glass window of the bookstore. In all of them she was wearing her serious journalist’s part frown part thoughtful expression. What the camera didn’t show was Ellen hovering behind the photographer’s shoulder pulling faces and doing everything she could possibly dream up to make Kristy laugh.
Ben knew he looked like any normal father treating his little girl to a shopping spree while she slept. Any normal father, he amended for his own benefit, who won’t sleep in the dark, who still walks with a limp after fifteen months and whose entire left hand side is an angry criss-cross mesh of scar tissue. Any normal father who lives day to day because he lacks the faith in the everyday to think about the future.
Last night Ellen had woken crying hoarsely at nothing more sinister than the residue of a bad dream. Ben had his own nightmare. It involved his best friend and a gun and had two divergent endings. He hated both of them with a passion.
A fair crowd was congregating at the door to the bookstore and around the entrance down into the Metro, the buzz of voices dissecting the idiosyncrasies of Krity’s debut novel. He joined the queue. When he looked into the plate glass he saw two things, neither of them the display: he saw a man that single drink away from alcoholism and behind that, he saw the inner conflict and demons driving him there, hard.
At the door, Ben balked and decided he couldn’t face going inside. Going through the rigmarole of shaking hands and being introduced as Mr. Kristy French, washed out has-been of a writer and resigned college lecturer. He told the girl acting as usherette to let Kristy know he’d gone for a latte and a bagel at Café Noir and he would see her when she was done receiving the day’s praise and plaudits.
Wheeling Evie’s buggy around, he said: “One writer in the family is enough,” and couldn’t tell if he was joking. He walked away.
Blackett Street and Old Eldon Square were both busy with the Saturday crowds and the new generation’s offering to the Spirit of the Hippy Movement. The noise made him uncomfortable. The bus fumes and the press of bodies, nauseous. He walked holding his breath. He knew he was doing it, but couldn’t help himself. He watched the faces, stared at the eyes of the crowd jost
ling by. Felt his grip on the buggy tighten, the cold, familiar terror inside. A trick of the light, surely? But the look in that boy’s eyes, the madness, its shadow, it had been there. It had. Ben forced himself to walk on by.
One day, maybe, the mental wounds would heal over with their own criss-crossing mesh of emotional scars, and he would sleep whole nights through, but until then it was one day at a time. Little steps.
The first had been moving into the University loaned doctoral apartment in Castle Leazes, the second taking responsibility for Ellen and Evie, and the third, equally important in its own way, leaving the words of The Sufferer’s Song to burn away with the inferno at Wit’s End.
He ordered a coffee and a salmon bagel, and took a seat looking out at the street. He watched the buses come and go, the people pass by, and watched himself: Peter Pan hiding behind his dark glasses, too frightened to look forward to tomorrow because of what it might hold in store, too weary to look back on yesterday because of what it meant to do so, and he knew it had to stop.
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