The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

  'Good work,' he said over and over as he drove, with his teeth bared and bright in the dashboard lights, and his black eyes burning.

  *

  Ben North's first thought, coming around from the blow to his head, was that his back was broken. He could barely breath, and when he did the pain in his ribs - on the right side, at the back - was excruciating.

  Blood ran along his scalp, tickling and wet.

  Maybe brain damage, he thought, but in an idle way, addled by his injuries. The thought passed by without even a hint of panic.

  He shifted a little, trying to feel the edge of his pain, and found it. Still short of breath, his scream gurgled in his throat, dragging bile up. The edge he found was something deep inside his lower leg. The smallest movement stabbed at every nerve ending in his leg, and more besides, up his back and through his guts, even.

  Frightened tears welled in his eyes.

  Then, after laying still and too scared to move again, he realised that his back couldn't be broken.

  I can move. It's going to hurt...but I can.

  He remembered, hazily, that he was a policeman. Policemen had radios. Gingerly, he checked his body for a radio, but found nothing.

  Somewhere above him, torn loose, the radio lay by a dead paramedic.

  North didn't remember the paramedic right then, and he couldn't see far enough to recognised the crumpled shape of Damien Cobb.

  Nothing for it.

  North jammed his teeth together, stood and took some weight on his legs. Something popped low down in his left shin. It carried right on popping - all the way through the muscle and skin at the side of his calf.

  This time, he had enough breath for a real scream.

  When he could think again, he wondered if he hadn't passed out for a while. This time around he remembered more. The paramedic he'd tried to save. The traffic accident just above him, and the explosion, and the awful heat.

  The fire burned, still.

  Ben thought he'd known fear, facing down drug addicts and tattooed lunatics with mean dogs. He didn't know...he hadn't known. Never could he have imagined just how deep fear could be. He felt it in his stomach, and then in his bladder.

  If I pissed myself, would it smell like fear?

  People were dead or dying up there in the flames, and he was too afraid to even shout out for help. Right then, he hated himself worse than ever.

  If he could make it from the dark in the trees even as far as the reach of the supermarket lights in the distance, then someone would find him. At least then he could just get away. A hospital. Pension. Disability.

  If he was lucky, he'd have a limp for the rest of his life.

  Something else blew, up on the motorway, and Ben's bladder finally gave in.

  Maybe his father had been right. The elder Mr. North always said Ben had a streak of yellow in him.

  *

  The clicking sound was the dead woman trying to settle her false teeth back in her mouth. Francis felt like laughing, for the same reason people sometimes laugh at funerals. Some weird response to shock, she guessed.

  I can just walk the fuck away. This circus now officially sucks.

  But the old woman latched onto her arm and pulled Francis close enough to clamp her false teeth on Francis' sleeve.

  For a moment, Francis' confusion ruled, and she couldn't understand that the old, dead woman was actually attempting to bite her.

  It didn't last long. Francis hit the woman with an open-handed slap and bounced back on her heels - away. The only direction she was worried about right then was away. The woman dropped and kind of slid out, arms and legs losing weight and strength and animation, so she looked just about as dead as any corpse Francis had ever seen.

  'You okay?' a man beside her asked. She swore, startled, before her heartbeat settled back. The man who spoke had a weak, half-arsed ginger-looking beard.

  Am I? she wondered. Am I OK?

  Maybe this is what nutters feel like all the time.

  'She's dead.' She tried to find the words to explain further, but she couldn't.

  The guy took Francis' arm and helped steady her.

  'Some weird night,' he said, letting go of her arm.

  She nodded, looked back at the man and saw he was pulling his belt free of his trousers, and that what she took for a weak beard wasn't. A thin sheen of blood covered the man's lower cheeks. He scratched compulsively with the nails on one hand even while he undid his trousers with the other hand. He seemed entirely unaware he did either thing.

  'Never taken a shit on a pensioner before. You?'

  She stumbled, walking backward.

  A kid of six or seven years kicked an adult in the shins. Probably the child's mother. The woman completely ignored the child and stared at the receipt for her shopping. She seemed to be absorbed in muttering the numbers on the print out.

  'What in fuck's name?'

  The man squatted down. 'What?' he said, like he was just buying a coffee or smoking a cigarette.

  Some people, like her, were horrified. The man with the bloody cheeks desperately strained as he hovered above the dead old woman.

  Everyone's nuts.

  The old woman's dentures were still stuck in her sleeve.

  Someone screamed, and it wasn't her. Francis still walked backward. She couldn't risk looking away. A few people tried to help others who didn't look like they could be helped. A woman with one of those burlap looking shopping bags threw herself face first into a thick metal pole, bounced back with a mashed nose and split lips, then tried again. Whatever she was attempting to do to her face obviously wasn't successful.

  Run.

  Francis Drew Sutton was a long way from perfect, but she'd never been stupid.

  Other people, sane people, like her, decided on the same course of action when half a woman appeared at the entrance. She wasn't alive, like the old lady, Francis realised. A security guard from the store was pushing the broken thing toward the entrance. The remains left a slug-trail of blood and viscera in her wake. The security guard made train noises as he pushed.

  'Choo-choo,' he was saying. Didn't matter at all to Francis. By then, she had a good head of steam going herself, headed wherever everyone else wasn't.

  Twenty yards free of the insanity she still clearly heard someone say, 'Mind, you're on my foot.'

  Francis felt that laugh bubbling up again. She bit down on it.

  She dismissed the idea of getting away in her car because she could see the motorway was jammed. She thought about her husband, maybe calling him, and dismissed that, too.

  Ahead, though, there were plenty of blue lights. Where there were blue lights, there would be police, and order, and sanity.

  She ran at an angle toward the embankment, aiming to skirt the fires. The embankment led up to the road, but to get clear of the heat of the fire, and to the safety of those blue lights, she had to get through a narrow strip of trees. Saplings mostly, but some of the larger branches on the mature trees - poplars, she thought - snatched at her clothing and whipped at her face or caught her hair.

  Even below the inferno the heat was immense, uncomfortable.

  It was dark down there, thrown into deep shadow by the light of the fire and the sweeping blue lights on thick smoke. The long heels on her sandals stuck in the dirt, but there was no way she was going on barefoot. She imagined all the discarded things littering the embankment. Broken bottles, twisted cans and twisted pieces of wreckage. She strained to see, but it was pointless. She had no choice but to cover the distance blind.

  She shook, even though it was hot. Life never seemed to matter until you saw real horror. Shoes, clothes, things - they seemed important. But all of those could be replaced. Being able to buy whatever she wanted wasn't the point.

  The woman was cut in half...like a carriage, decoupled. Choo.

  She thought this as she put her foot down and landed on something softer than the grass. The softer thing cried out, but the cry was little more than rushi
ng air.

  Francis yelped. Already panicked, she kicked out and was rewarded by another muffled shout.

  Right then, on the border of the kind of terror that made people hurtle headlong until they ran out of breath, she figured fuck the dark and fuck the mud and fuck the fire; stumbling over person hiding in the trees below the embankment was incentive enough to get her running again.

  Her gym-trained muscles bunched and tightened, ready to hit the incline, when she heard the person call out. The voice was weak, but the words were unmistakable.

  'Help? Help me?'

  Whoever it was, they didn't sound mad enough to shit on old women who tried to bite people with their stinking yellow dentures.

  He sounded plain old scared.

  You sure, Francis? How sure are you that the insane aren't cunning?

  Then, another thought, and one she was more accustomed to thinking.

  Just leave them. Get safe. Send someone back.

  That sounded like something her husband would suggest, and advice she'd been more than happy to follow.

  Her friends? Her family?

  'Fuck 'em, Francis,' he would have said. 'You don't need 'em.'

  That went both ways, though, didn't it? She'd taken his advice long enough to stop caring about him, too.

  Didn't see that coming, did you? Prick.

  'Help me,' said the man in the darkness again. Not just frightened, but in pain.

  Of course he's hurt. I just stepped on him and kicked him in the mouth.

  Maybe he was a survivor from the wreck, though. Maybe he was dying.

  With fire ahead and madness behind and her and this man in between both, Francis made her choice, and met Ben North.

  *

  III.

  Wayland Redman

  Wayland Redman stayed on the motorway for just five minutes. He was aware of the cars that piled up in his wake, if not the extent of the wreck. He was aware, too, that a wider game was being played...if he could not see the whole picture, know the rules, or even recognise the game, though, it was because O'Dell willed it to be so.

  Wayland thought perhaps his luck finally ran out, meeting a road block as he left the main road for quieter streets. It looked like a random thing, set up by the police - the kind they often lay on when they're bored, or really looking for something else other than drunks and bad car owners.

  His sweat had yet to dry from the days' heat, and though the night was cooler, the van was not. Ahead, everyone else was stopped by a simple wave of the hand. Policemen half-heartedly spoke to drivers and made a show of checking tread on tyres.

  Wayland glanced down, but the kid was out cold in the foot well beneath the passenger seat.

  'Fuck it,' said Wayland.

  The kid might be unconscious, but awake probably would've been better. No time to prop him up, or coach him, or scare the piss from him into pretending to be a grandson or something.

  Screwed, thought Wayland.

  But then he wasn't.

  Of all the cars and vans that were stopped, his was the only one waved through without incident.

  Wayland smiled and nodded and passed. Sometimes he was lucky. Sometimes O'Dell thought ahead.

  He passed through the outskirts of the small town and onto an industrial estate, mostly comprised of large warehouses where things like old furniture or power tools were sold. Out the other side, he took a few turns around one of the country's many uniform housing estates. Ten miles south of the accident he took the bypass, then returned to the motorway. From there he drove at a steady 60 mph. The drive took forty minutes and ended at a concertinaed garage door.

  The kid was still out. He had a welt the size of an egg on the side of his head.

  Once, Wayland had been a killer. That was another life, though, and this was his life now. The kid was worth money. Dead, he wasn't worth a penny.

  The old man stepped from the van to remove a thick padlock from the garage door before he pressed a button on the his key fob. The door rattled into the roof space while Wayland drove in, then eased himself from the seat of the van for the last time that day, kneading his back and wincing at the pressure in his bladder. He flicked on the lights and used the fob to close the door behind them, then hung it and the keys from a hook on the wall.

  The kid stirred.

  Eight, decided Wayland. The kid was eight years old.

  A small sink and kitchen unit stood against the back wall, with a kettle on top and tea rings on the work surface. He filled the kettle with water from a five litre bottle before he set it going. A chipped and stained mug waited with a teabag and one sugar in it and a plate over it to keep out spiders and dust. He had only powdered milk, because he never knew when he was going to be able to make it to the lock up.

  The kid switched from aimless movement to muttering.

  'Waking up, are we?'

  No answer, but he didn't expect one.

  Time to get to work, then. Tea after. Kid first.

  Wayland set his gut and lower back as best he could, then pulled the child out and over and onto his shoulder - the child weighed next to nothing, and although Wayland was in his seventies, he was still strong enough to pick up a little kid.

  The boy mumbled, groggy, and his words didn't make much sense to Wayland. Either way, the kid couldn't have said anything to stop the old man carrying him down damp concrete steps into the dark room below.

  *

  George Farnham opened his eyes and in the meagre light of a candle set in front of him was an old man with a short cigarette stuck to his bottom lip.

  'Now, kid, if you scream, I'm going to kill you. If you fight me, I'm going to kill you. If you're a good boy, you'll get out of this alive.'

  He's lying, thought George. Or...he doesn't really know.

  'Nod if you understand,' said Wayland.

  George nodded.

  'I reckon you're a smart boy. Do as you're told, and you and me'll get on just fine, right?'

  George nodded again.

  'Good. Now, sit tight. Sit right tight,' said Wayland. Then he headed up the stairs. He closed a trapdoor on a length of string behind him, and George was alone with his candle in the room.

  The room was big enough to walk around in. It was bare of any kind of decoration or comfort. A simple, plain, rough concrete cell. George didn't get up and walk, though. What was the point? Run to the trapdoor and bash against it, or try to dig his way out, like a hero?

  He wasn't a hero. He was a boy. He knew things, sometimes. Not everything, because nobody should know everything. Even at eight George understood that much about his talent.

  He did knew perfectly well he wasn't getting out of the room by that old man's hand.

  He pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged himself like that while he rocked and tried to find some kind of comfort. He cried, too, because he was eight years old, he was in a dark, dank basement somewhere, and because the man with the cigarette and the wrinkled old face was a liar. His words came from his mouth and not his eyes.

  George was a smart kid. Smart enough to know he was going to die, but it wouldn't be the old smoking man.

  He's waiting for the other one, thought George and when these strange thoughts came to him, he knew they were true. They always were.

  *

  Steam drifted from a cup of tea on a small table while Wayland sat on an ancient wooden chair with one broken strut and waited. Every time he moved the chair tilted a little, but that was fine, because he was a man used to that economy of movement that came from being old.

  He tapped ash into another mug he used for an ashtray, whether needed or not. He checked his watch. The man who had only ever identified himself as Mr. O'Dell was late. Any later and Wayland knew he'd have to leave, and cut his losses.

  It wasn't like O'Dell to be late. But when Wayland switched on his tiny portable television and saw the news, he thought maybe he'd been caught in the snarl up. The presenter sat at his desk, speaking to a reporter close to the sce
ne, with just a few images that looked like stock photos. The kind of thing reporters did from inside hostile territory, like North Korea, or Iran. But that made no sense to Wayland; why would there be no film of the accident? Footage of a horrific blaze, maybe a blackened car that hinted at a painful death; these things were gold dust to news programmes.

  The reporter said something about a chemical spill and with a sour face on him, like he wanted to call bullshit on the whole story. But everyone's got a job, Wayland guessed.

  The TV droned on, but Wayland only half-listened to it, while his other half listening out for the boy, just in case he cried out. Not that it would do the kid much good - the lock-up was in a quiet side street and the kid was under a couple of feet of concrete.

  He checked the watch on his left wrist once again (the watch, like everything Wayland owned, reliable) before he tried to tap ash from the cigarette between the fingers of his right hand and found he'd already smoked it to the filter.

  Both measures of time were reliable enough.

  Time to go.

  The garage door jolted, then started to roll up. The fluorescents winked out for a second, then hummed back to life. And there he was; all suited up, that odd scar pale on his forehead, and his ever-present fuck-you grin. Mr. O'Dell.

  Wayland was glad of the bright, unnatural light overhead. Few things could get his heart beating above a murmur. Perhaps the feel of another's blood on his skin, or a wet blade in his hand...he was well used to the dark and the things that happened there. Still, though, the man before him made Wayland's skin crawl and turn cold. O'Dell's eyes looked through Wayland, at something Wayland could never see, but whatever it was, it felt like a bad thing yet to come. Always there was a sense of some future pain when he met with O'Dell.

  And that fucking insane grin that never left.

  O'Dell stopped in front of the old man and looked down with eyes that were black and deep and always seemed alight with madness or mirth or both. O'Dell's teeth were a little yellow, as you'd expect. His skin pale and spotted with brown, and his unassuming hair that was always brushed back from a forehead that bore a single penny-sized scar. Though he looked maybe sixty, at a push, Wayland guessed O'Dell was older than sixty, maybe even the same age as Wayland. The madman just wore those years a damn sight better. Probably helped that he didn't smoke and didn't have cancer up his arse.