Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  I am, most definitely, in the process of getting myself in trouble. I can just feel it.

  But then, just like that, the balding man with the spectacles and the maroon vest is back with a stack of manila folders, saying, “Here it is,” and I smile, and Aiko smiles—

  —and then a Russian voice says, “Well fancy seeing you here.”

  I turn, already reaching for my gun. She’s standing there, short, heavyset, steel glistening along her jawline. Beside her stands a taller man, dark-haired and pale-skinned. He has hangdog eyes, hollow cheeks, and more stubble than a rock star. His smile reveals chrome-coated teeth.

  I’ve got the gun halfway out of its holster. The tall Russian tutts. The short one mutters. Then the world goes white. Gravity goes away. And I sail through the air as the room around me explodes.

  FIFTEEN

  I remember hearing once that one of the worst things to drive your car into is a tree. Worse than a brick wall or sheet glass. No give in trees apparently. Big thick oak buggers just stand there and take it and laugh at your crumple zones.

  Apparently it’s very much the same sort of situation with people and bookshelves.

  For a minute I do a very clever impression of a man lying on the ground incapacitated by pain. In the mean time, the British Museum Reading Room takes the opportunity to pretty much go to hell.

  People scream and run. Light flashes. Wood splinters.

  If you ask me, the bookshelves had it coming.

  I manage to make it to all fours, breathing hard, spitting blood. The world tilts and I haul on the bookshelf that did my spine in, grasping for my bearings.

  Then there’s a sound like the world grinding to a halt. A deepening “bwoom” of sound like the audio track on a video slackening to a quarter speed. I see the tall Russian standing, metal arms stretched out toward me. Between him and I is a great ball of rippling space. A bubble of heat shimmer.

  I dive sideways, crash over chairs. The ball rolls past my head. Missed me, you bastard.

  But the Russian is smiling. And I start to worry, but then he disappears as Malcolm West pile drives him to the ground in a flying tackle. And special government training be damned, that is how you solve a problem.

  “Arthur! Get down!”

  I spin to see who’s yelling at me. Aiko, I realize. And then I think that instead of working that out, I probably should have gotten down.

  Something crashes into my shoulder. I spin across the floor. I slam down on my back. The world shudders and shakes as my head bounces off the floor.

  Apparently, the bookshelf hasn’t finished with me yet. Wooden spikes are growing from its shelves, its sides. One lances out, spearing the ground between my legs. It is inches away from putting a serious crimp in my relationship with Felicity Shaw.

  The spike shudders. Its surface fractures. Tiny thorns burst forth, stretching out.

  Time to move.

  I perform something close to a backwards roll. When I come up, the pole has turned into a fistful of wooden spikes. It rises up before me, and I scrabble back, desperate to get out of range of the oncoming strike.

  But the wooden fist doesn’t come down. It rises and rises, growing, thickening. It sprouts leaves. I stare, confused.

  It’s a tree. It’s a bloody great tree growing in the British Museum Reading Room. And it’s not alone. Back where the bookshelf stood—there’s a whole bloody thicket of the bastards growing there.

  I don’t understand what’s going on. I stagger to my feet, staring, clutching my injured shoulder. Blood soaks through the fabric. I can see Clyde, hood thrown back, a halo of sparks around his wooden mask. He flings his arms about like a deranged semaphore operator. The world explodes around him. The girl, Jasmine, has produced two pistols. She fires them, one then the other, then the other, the other.

  My gun. I grab for—

  “Get down, you silly bugger!”

  I wish people would stop shouting that at—

  Winston collides with my midriff, removing the air from my lungs and my feet from the ground.

  We land in a tumbling crash of limbs and pages. Winston is yelling, “You’ll rip me! You’ll fucking rip me!” and I’m trying to get the breath to say anything.

  We crash against something. My head rattles. I’m lying on top of Winston. Back where I was standing there’s a tree tearing up through the ground, splintering the floorboards. And what the hell is going on?

  “Get off me, you big nancy,” Winston says. “You’re not my type at all.”

  I comply as best I can. I roll off, still shaky, vision blurred.

  “Get up! Get up!” Winston barks at me.

  I look around. A forest. How did this place turn into a forest?

  Another bubble of sound. A grinding of the universe. Another tree rips upwards.

  “What are they doing?” I ask, still trying to clear my head.

  “Getting away with those Chernobyl papers. What’s it fucking look like?” Winston is already running back to the fray.

  I grab my gun. It feels reassuring and heavy. I sweep around in a circle. My sight lines are for shit. Trees block everything, new branches expanding into space. A shadow moves and I fire. Nobody yells. Neither friend nor foe.

  I hear gunfire to the left, wood splintering.

  I start forward. Movement is getting difficult, the trees jammed tight together, trunks fused. There are narrow woodland passageways floored with torn maroon carpet. The still extant bookshelves are caught between branches spilling their contents like ruined birds’ nests.

  They are turning the bookshelves into trees. That’s the only explanation that makes sense. Which is one of those messed up pieces of logic that this job forces upon me.

  I hit a dead end, push back the way I came only to find a new tree blocking my path. I’m in a tight little clearing. No way out. I spin. No exits. I hear a yell. A scream.

  Up. I look. Trunks giving way to branches. The space less dense. And I didn’t so much spend my youth climbing trees as I did playing video games and reading books, but there’s no time to learn like the present.

  I stick my foot in a fork of trunk and branch. And it’s surprisingly easy, everything is so tightly jammed it’s not hard to find the next handhold, the next place to put my feet. Up I go. Five feet. Ten feet. Fifteen feet. I am swaying in a bramble of twigs and leaves.

  Even as I make my way forward, the trees don’t stop growing. The press of the place intensifies. I am briefly stuck and have to leave my jacket behind. I push through a net of thin branches and a trunk closes the path behind me. I wriggle, panicked, between two encroaching trunks. I don’t care about Russians. I just want to get out. There is sunlight distantly above me. Windows. Maybe I could get out through the windows.

  And then suddenly space. Suddenly I am teetering, the branch beneath my feet bending, bending, creaking. I scrabble back, drop my gun. I watch it tumble away. One rotation. Two. It hits the floor with a sharp crack.

  A woman turns. Steel glints.

  Oh shit.

  I’m twenty plus feet in the air. I try to push back, but the branches resist me.

  The Russian smiles.

  Twenty plus feet. The fall probably won’t kill me.

  The Russian won’t give it time to do that.

  And I don’t know what Kurt Russell would do. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to get in this situation.

  White light and the smell of ozone fill the air.

  Sod it.

  I jump.

  SIXTEEN

  I leave my perch as lightning arcs. A stark white line playing dot-to-dot from wall, to her, to me.

  No. To where I was. Splinters scour my heels, tear my pants. I skid through the sky, the shock wave slamming into me, skewing my trajectory. I strike branches. They crack and snap as I punch a hole through the forest.

  I’m only six feet off the ground when I finally hit clear air. I plummet into a low clearing. My head cracks off the floor. Everything spawns a twin.
/>   I roll, clutching my temples. It takes me a minute to realize I’ve come to rest with my head in someone’s lap.

  “Seriously?” Aiko says. “Again? Seriously?”

  My lips try to smile but even that hurts. “I think I left half my skin up in the trees,” I say. It seems relevant at the moment.

  She shakes her head reassuringly. “Quarter of it, tops.”

  I push off her, still groggy. Malcolm and Aiko are in the clearing too, crouched low, bristling with weapons. I reach for my gun. Then I remember it’s gone.

  “Shit.”

  “Malcolm,” Aiko calls. “You got any spare toys on you?”

  “Always,” Malcolm says to Aiko and holds out something smooth and black and deadly.

  “Safety’s off,” he says as I take it. “One in the chamber.”

  I realize that underneath Malcolm West’s long-suffering exterior there is someone who is quite possibly very frightening.

  “How did you get these in here?” I ask. Nothing seems to be making sense.

  “Not really the relevant question right now, is it?” Aiko says. And she does have a point.

  “We’re going to have to move,” I say. I say it even though it seems rather a shame. I think I could grow to like taking cover here. But I nod up at two bookshelves I noticed caught in the trees above us as I made my way down. “They hit those and we run out of space.”

  “Where do we go?” Jasmine says, looking eager and excited, which seems rather inappropriate for a life-or-death battle. I blink. Too many blows to the head.

  “Clyde,” I say. “We find him. He’s the biggest gun we have.”

  “The skinny dude?” Aiko looks uncertain about this plan.

  “Trust me.” And from their expressions, I genuinely think they do.

  “You know where he is?” Malcolm asks.

  And then, conveniently enough, Clyde comes flying through the hole I made in the trees, and lands with a sickening crack on the floor.

  SEVENTEEN

  Clyde bounces like a rag doll. He spins and skitters. His mask flies off, spins across the floor.

  The tall pale man whose body Clyde controls lies unconscious on the floor. I’d forgotten that face. Too oddly proportioned to be handsome, but a face you would remember. Delicately boned. Skin pale enough you feel you should see the bone beneath. No fat. No excess. Cheekbones and skin.

  The eyes are open. They see nothing.

  “Clyde!” I shout. I start running—to the body at first, but then I remember that’s not where Clyde is. That’s not who he is. I run to the mask, scoop it up.

  For a terrible moment I think it’s going to be cracked, spilling circuitry and Clyde’s soul. But, thank God, it’s still in one piece. I scoop the mask up, head over to the body. I flip it roughly onto its back. Then, as carefully as I can, I slip the mask back over the head.

  “Clyde?” I say. “Clyde?”

  Nothing. The head lolls. And does he need time to re-establish control? To reboot?

  “Clyde!” I say again, my voice rising.

  “Shhh!” Aiko hisses. “He’s unconscious.”

  And what is he doing? Rebooting? How long does that take? Any time at all is too long right now.

  So that’s our biggest gun down. Time to rely on the little ones.

  “OK,” I say, suppressing the expletives that want to spill from me. “We need a good firing position. Somewhere—”

  “Move!” Malcolm bellows.

  Above us the universe grinds on its gears. A shimmering bubble of space engulfs one of the bookshelves.

  A branch lances towards us.

  The clearing’s exit is a low tunnel. I back into it, hands under Clyde’s shoulders, heaving. The clearing is disappearing fast, thick wooden walls closing off our exit.

  Everything is dark and close. I’m scooting backwards on my arse, bumping up against someone’s heels, Clyde a dead weight behind me.

  Another clearing. Malcolm shouting again. Another loose bwoom of sound. Another tunnel. Clyde’s feet bumping over roots and shattered floorboards.

  “They’re going to crush us.” It’s Jasmine talking, her voice climbing the octaves. “There’s no way out. They’re closing the exits.”

  And I’m not one for pessimism, but it is starting to looking like I’ll be getting a closer look than I’d like at how pâté is made.

  “Quiet.” Malcolm’s voice is a low roll of thunder. “Need to work out where they are. They’re giving us a lot of cover.” There is a brief tense moment of silence. Then, “This way,” Malcolm rumbles.

  We shuffle on. Everything’s quiet now. No more lightning cracks. No more… well whatever the hell the other thing is.

  We come to something that, relatively speaking, seems like a clearing. I wedge my way into the tangle of brambles, branches bending and cracking.

  “Shhh,” Malcolm hisses. He’s lying on his belly, clutching a gun with a barrel long enough to suggest that he might be compensating for something.

  I twist, trying to see what he’s looking at. We’re near the edge of the tress, I realize. Just a thin web of branches separates us from open space. A few yards of open floorboards, and then a doorway. A sign glows above it, letters bright and red: EXIT.

  The woman is still there, her back to us. She’s bent over a desk studying something. A few bookshelves still stand between her and us. Malcolm holds the pistol in both hands, drawing a bead on the back of her head.

  Shooting her while she’s so completely unaware will not exactly be a sporting move, but the other team is using magic so I think the rules of gentlemanly conduct have been cast pretty far away.

  The whole world seems to narrow, seems to become the two points of focus. Malcolm. The Russian. I can see the sweat on his forehead. I can see the light of the LEDs around the woman’s wrist reflecting off the sheet of paper she holds up. I can see Malcolm bring his breathing under control. Slow and steady. One. Two. The Russian’s hair moves slightly as she changes the angle of her head. Three. Four. Malcolm’s finger starts to tense.

  “No!” a voice howls. “Run! It’s a trap! A fucking great ginormous trap!”

  A pile of books explodes out of one of the shelves. A leg concertinas out of the whirling mass. An arm. Winston.

  Then the tall Russian stands up behind him, from where he was taking cover. Between bookshelves. Between us and the woman. Staring and smirking over Winston’s shoulder.

  “What the f—” someone is yelling, but then the Russian’s arms bunch. Lightning flares off the ground. I dive backwards, half-dragging Clyde, half-falling backwards. Aiko rolls through branches. Malcolm catapults forwards, into Winston’s path. Jasmine pulls her guns, too late, too late.

  The lightning hits the tall Russian. Winston flails his arms, still running. The Russian flings his arms forward. The air coalesces around them, becomes a ball of gel that slops forward and rolls through the air. Winston hits the tree line. I hit the floor.

  The ball of gelatinous space hits Winston.

  Bwoom.

  Winston stops, staggers. He drops to his hands and knees.

  He manages to raise his head, trembling all over. He looks through the trees, looks me right in the eye.

  “Bugger, mate,” he says. “Balls and buggery-fuck.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I dive away from Winston, my gun out, finger squeezing, barrel barking. It’s not as easy to hit things while doing that as they make it look in the movies. Flying through the air, body thrumming with adrenaline—it’s not exactly good for the aim. Still, it’s satisfying to see the Russian dive for cover.

  The others scatter through the maze of branches. Lightning slams through the trees. Fire licks at fresh leaves.

  A branch bursts out of Winston, a wooden tentacle, thickening, widening. He screams, his mouth open so wide his whole head hinges back on the spine of a book. One leg is growing, lengthening. I see bark spreading over his chest.

  And shit and balls. Oh unredeeming buggery-fuck. The
y’re turning Winston into a tree. They’re turning him into… Jesus.

  He screams again. It’s muffled. Leaves burst from his face even as it’s lifted into the sky by his suddenly colossal legs.

  Lightning arcs. He staggers round, smashes a wooden arm into the newly grown forest. Branches fall like rain, rattling and snapping their way down. He sways again. The top of a tree falls down beside him, obliterating another bookshelf. The tall Russian dives for safety a second time.

  I scramble for cover. Crouched behind a tree, I’m unable to look away. I wait for it to be over, for stasis to seize Winston, for him to die.

  Turns out he’s a bit of a persistent bugger.

  “Oh fuck me backwards!” Words start to emerge out of Winston’s senseless yelling. “Oh Jesus.”

  He smashes into more of the newly grown forest. I heave on Clyde moments before a tree limb slams into the space his head just occupied.

  “I’m a fucking Ent!” Winston yells. “I’m a Tolkien fanboy’s wet dream!”

  He stumbles forward. The Russians scatter as he mashes towards them.

  “What have you bastards done to me?” He sweeps an arm clumsily in their direction. Furniture is obliterated. Chairs fly across the open space, shatter against the walls. The woman turns, a look of fear on her face. She stretches out a hand.

  “No you bleeding don’t.”

  Winston’s massive foot comes down. Lightning flares—

  —and dies. There is a crack and a crunch. A sickening wet snap of bone and blood.

  “Ow! Jesus!”

  Winston’s foot is on fire. He hops backwards, trips, comes sprawling towards us. The tall Russian is scurrying for the floor.

  “No.” Malcolm is calm and furious all at once. He opens fire at the Russian. I join in. Bullets chew through wood, spatter among bookshelves, embed themselves in Winston’s leg.