The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

Probably uses it to quarter his meat, she thought, horrified and scared at once.

  It quivered.

  The thunder.

  She had nothing to fight with. No strength. No courage.

  The hook in Edgar's shoulder.

  A desperate last chance.

  'Shkksh...shaash...krrssh.'

  Insane noises from a lunatic mouth. Closer, now, his teeth looked like pottery shards, ceramic and sharp.

  Francis grabbed Edgar's hand. She felt his good shoulder give as she pulled herself higher, onto her knees.

  A dislocated shoulder's better than dead, right?

  She yanked the sack free of the lower end of the hook.

  But while the man was insane, he was still quick. He swung the saw like a sword and the long metal teeth sank into Francis' back. Searing pain buckled her entire body, she convulsed, spittle flying and puke rising, but the hook came free.

  Edgar's flesh hung from the steel.

  She impaled Kssh Ksash foot against the floorboard, just as he'd done to her.

  'Shaaa?'

  With both hands this time, adrenaline and joy pushing the pain back, she swung the sharp curve up between his legs, and as he doubled she hit him a third time in the back of the neck. The mad man and Francis both lay in the dirt and straw, panting.

  The man died. Francis didn't.

  *

  Later, early light roused Francis, and a dog's high bark somewhere nearby.

  She wondered if Edgar had died during the night. She wondered if maybe she had, too.

  Nope. Dead chicks don't bleed.

  Francis reached out and poked Edgar's dislocated shoulder. He grunted and growled, unable to bring himself back from whatever nightmare he'd retreated to. She'd have to do it. Edgar's blood, the dead man's blood, her own - all splashed out on the dry boards. What little she had in her stomach came out. It splattered her hands and hair and she didn't care.

  I'm alive. Edgar's alive. He's not.

  The heavy saw was there, too. Whatever the man had severed in her back made her right hand tingly and numb, but she thought she could still manage to heft the saw and cut through the rope from which Edgar hung. But she couldn't get to the rope. Even the lowest point was around four feet too high for her to reach, because she could only kneel. Mangled and messy, her boots were the only thing holding her feet together.

  She hurt, but it was total pain, and so complete she felt suffused with it. A sensory deprivation experience, but one that left agony rather than free-floating thoughts and meditations.

  And pain like that was a goad to Francis, because as long as she hurt she couldn't be dead. While she bled, her heart still beat.

  She clenched the saw in her fist and put her right foot down. One hand on the floor, the other bunched around Edgar's collar, she dragged herself up.

  She shook. She wavered.

  But the saw, angled upward, now reached the rope.

  The teeth were brilliant peaks along the blade. Two long cuts was all it took. Edgar fell and hit the filthy, bloody floor head first. Even that didn't rouse him.

  'Fucked if I'm carrying you out of here,' she told him, still breathless from fighting against the pain. 'Fucked if I am.'

  She stuck a finger in the hole in his shoulder. That did the trick.

  Edgar screamed and stared at her, his eyes huge and confused.

  The Kssh-ksash man's van was right there, just outside the barn. At this point she'd be a bitch if she had to. She really wanted to get the hell out of the nuthouse.

  'Stop being such a pussy, Edgar. I've got two broken feet and that lunatic ran a saw over my back. Your feet work. My arms work. Get the fuck up! We're getting out of here. I nearly died, saving your skin. Get. Me. Up!'

  The effort hurt, but it was rain in the ocean.

  It hurt to see a man cry in pain, but she understood. Pain was...painful.

  'Let's go,' he said. He was pale but for spots of blood across his face. Seeing the old man like that dragged back an uncomfortable memory of another man, Ben North.

  It was unwelcome. When she took Edgar's belt buckle and took some weight on her feet, she cried just as he had.

  'Can you walk at all?' he asked. Everything about him was weak.

  But she needed him, if only to get the hell away.

  That again, Francis? How deep does being a heartless bitch go?

  'What...fifty, sixty yards?' she said, trying to make her voice light enough to carry them to the van, at least. 'Pfft. I can make it. We can...right? Team GB, Edgar.'

  Get him involved. Be cold, if you have to. Warm if that works...but get the hell out.

  Sure, she was calculating. Not a nice thing to be thinking about herself, maybe, but Francis was a survivor. If it came to it she'd kill to keep going.

  I already have, she thought.

  Together, Edgar and Francis covered those yards. Slowly, achingly and agonising.

  Kssh fucker didn't bother her at all. Yet every time Ben's dead face surfaced, she hated herself just enough to take the pain.

  Pain wasn't just on the outside. And pain wasn't just useless, either.

  Edgar stumbled and nearly took them both down. As it was, the shift in her weight hurt enough for her to cry again. Tough or not, broken flesh hurts. Broken bones hurt a hell of a lot worse.

  'Francis?'

  'Still alive.'

  'Are you sure about this? Can you drive?'

  'I hope so,' she said.

  'Do it anyway,' said Edgar. 'Fire's coming. The man who brings fire? O'Dell. Right?'

  Movement was agony, but it wasn't going to go away, was it? Why be a little bitch about it? It was her pain. Pain was better than him.

  'I can deal with it,' she said. Now they were just ten yards from the van.

  Another horrible thought came to her. What if the keys aren't there?

  'Good, Francis.' Talking was tiring him, but he didn't give in, either. Maybe because of what he said next. 'Because I can see it. His fire's coming, Francis. It's coming now.'

  Chilled, the thought spurred them both on the last few feet. The keys were there, hanging from the ignition.

  'Sometimes, God is good enough,' she said.

  The van stank of rot. Behind the only two seats, the interior was covered with old blood, shards that were probably teeth, and clumps of hair. The mess in the back crawled with flies.

  It was good enough. Both clambered into the passenger side. Francis shuffled across the bench seat and turned the key.

  Despite the dents in the van, the still heat, the human remains, the flies, and even her pain, the engine sounded just as good as a peal of childish laughter.

  'That's the best thing I've ever heard,' she said, and pulled away from the farm. The engine rumbled like it agreed.

  *

  The van balked at any speed over fifty. It probably sustained some engine damage from swiping the Mercedes. It didn't matter - for a while, with the windows down and the rushing wind to blow away the heat and the stench, it felt wonderful.

  Silence, but punctuated by Francis' swearing - whenever she had to shift gear, or even just to take a corner. Turning the wheel pulled at the drying wound across her back.

  Her mind still sparked, though. A slow fire, perhaps, these thoughts, like coals burning and glowing a low-orange in the early hours. After ten, twelve miles, she checked on Edgar and found him staring at her.

  'What?'

  'You're bleeding.'

  'Aren't we both?'

  'No...you've a nose bleed.'

  Francis brought her finger to her nose and wiped. There, on the second knuckle, a bright line of blood on her filthy hands.

  'Would you look at that,' she said. She shrugged, then hissed at the pain the gesture brought. 'Could be worse, I suppose. My feet are fucked, and I can still drive. I can handle a little more blood.'

  'You swear a lot.'

  'Yeah. I do. If I stop swearing, it'll be because I'm dead. And if I'm dead, we'll both be fucked, won't we?'
r />   *

  O'Dell waited on confirmation in his black Audi. A phone call would have sufficed, but he'd waited over a half a century to see the first of his fires light the sky. Things he'd never be able to feel - blast radius, fire, shockwave, radiation - would always be denied to him. But it was a clear day, no weather dampening, low atmospheric detonation - four miles and change, there would be almost total devastation. Maybe ten miles out, heavy radiation, depending on what the weather brought in the next few days. But radiation's not instant. It takes a while. The Audi, ten miles out, was far enough for O'Dell to live and close enough to watch.

  For so long he'd balanced the world in his hands, and he was tired of holding it. When things become tiresome, or heavy, or old - a sensible man puts them down.

  The car was cold, the air condition in the car set as high as it would go. The glass was heavy, as were the doors and floor and roof. The car's suspension was modified, too. An executive model made just about as good as car could be.

  O'Dell sniffed a little, not noticing a dot of blood beneath his nose. Air conditioning often gave him the sniffles. He didn't worry, just wiped with a handkerchief.

  He glanced at his watch, not the handkerchief.

  0759.

  'Boom boom,' he said. No cigar or brandy for him, though. When you set out to destroy the world, one little bomb was nothing to get stiff about.

  *

  The temperature spiked suddenly and rapidly in the charnel van Francis' drove. The wind through the open windows no longer a relief, but dry, uncomfortable. With the wind, a weird, electrical fire-smell. Like the breeze from an old electric fan, dusty and dangerous, bare wires heating up someplace inside a plastic shell. Francis glanced in the wing mirror. Edgar glanced at his. An automatic response, partly, but also because they were expecting an explosion.

  Just not this.

  A double flash just beat a cloud that rose skyward. No rain fall from this cloud, but earth, instead. Not falling down, but blasted up, like a cloud that could only work backwards. Everything was suddenly upside down, everything suddenly wrong.

  Dust and fire, the shockwave and the radiation, and an entire town vaporised in the first nuclear explosion on British soil.

  'Was that...?' Edgar couldn't seem to finish the sentence. He blinked, compulsively, but so did Francis. Her eyes felt full of sand, or grit. Watery and sore both, but she wouldn't take her hands from the wheel. If she stopped, or crashed, they were dead.

  'I think so,' said Francis.

  'Are we going to die?' he asked.

  Francis shrugged.

  'How far is that going to reach?'

  'I don't know.'

  'All those people...all...are they...?'

  Francis slammed her fist against the centre of the wheel. 'I don't know! Stop fucking asking, for fuck's sake.'

  She took a calm and slow breath of hot air. Maybe full of poison already.

  Her own panic wasn't helping, and wouldn't ever help. She had to be a cold hand now, more than ever.

  Because this is the end.

  She tried to speak like a normal person, but she was unable to think her way around that simple sentence. It became a barrier in her head.

  'This is the end.'

  Just that. From a song, a film, she couldn't remember. Just four words on endless repeat.

  'They're dead,' she said when she could think and not scream. 'If they're not, they will be. Let me drive, Edgar. For the love of God...leave me alone so I can drive.'

  *

  They were thirty or more miles out, too far for the shockwave to affect them.

  A few miles more and they reached their destination. Francis found herself nearly blind when she pulled the van into the shade beneath an underpass. Traffic thundered across the road above, and rocked the van on the road below. Panicked drivers, but none careened or crashed or drove their cars from the bridge in a fit of despair while the cloud rose to the south.

  The underpass was the best shelter she and Edgar could get. Thick concrete above and all around. Like those old Cold War survival tips - hid under a table. She figured that was against falling debris, rather than the radiation.

  But their table was concrete. Better, she hoped, against blast and the invisible killer that would follow. She'd seen those old films of nuclear experiments on unnamed islands, sat in cinemas, gazing up at CGI apocalypses more times that she knew.

  None of which told her how far could be safe.

  'How far do you think we got?' Edgar's ragged words were soft, hard to hear against the constant roar of traffic. The van sat half-in, half-out of the near side lane. Cars sped by. Some people yelled at them from open windows, others just honked. More just swerved around the van and fled wherever they could.

  Francis was groggy, filthy, covered in blood and pain.

  No respite yet, she thought. No showers, no four poster beds or morphine drips.

  She wondered if those things were done, or if they would come again. Comfort, or safety.

  'Don't know,' she said, tired of most everything, including Edgar. 'You want to sleep on in the van, go ahead. Or, you could sleep like a king on a bed of splintered pallets here. This is the best there is. It's where I've been hiding. Might be the best there is for a while.'

  'Here?'

  'What do you think? O'Dell just blew up your hometown. With a nuclear bomb. You think I'm going to go rent a flat in Kensington, get a shih tzu in a fucking handbag and go looking for the paparazzi? I'm on the run, Edgar. So are you. Jesus, wake up!'

  'What about a hospital?'

  'Can you hear yourself? We'd be dead five minutes after we get there. Dead. Don't you get it? If you want to live, stay away from everything. Everyone. And if you think one bomb is the end for a man like O'Dell, you're an idiot.'

  'I need stitches...doctors... '

  'And I need a good man, cheap gin and two new feet. None of those things are happening, either, are they? Get out of the van,' she said.

  Edgar's cheeks flushed, anger the only colour left in his skin. 'What happened to you?'

  'O'Dell,' she said. 'And if you hadn't noticed...he just happened to you, too.'

  She was too tired and hurt to yell more than that.

  It was maybe a foot from the seat to the tarmac.

  Getting out of the van was going to hurt enough to shut them both up. But staying inside wasn't particularly comfortable, either. She hurt, he hurt, too. She got it, but God, did he have to bitch about it all the fucking time?

  'You want to come, come. Meet the boy who saved your life. Or, you're welcome to drive to the nearest hospital and take your chances.'

  'I can't drive!'

  'No?' said Francis.

  She wrenched the door opened and slipped and hit the road. She cried out. Pain pulsed through her, head to toe. But she didn't give in.

  She never did.

  Fuck my feet, too. I'll crawl.

  A metallic, grinding noise echoed from the concrete. Francis looked, but flash-blind and deep in the shadows, the direction was impossible to gauge.

  Unbidden and unreasonable, fear touched her.

  O'Dell found George.

  He's coming from the shadows, close by. Scrapping something against the surface of the road. Wordless but for a noise hissing between his sharpened, insane teeth. 'Kssh,' he's saying. The scrapping blade is rising.

  'KSASH!'

  Against terror, Francis would never give. She crawled from the sound.

  'Fuck you,' she said. 'I'm not screaming for you.' Her fingernails snapped against the rough road while she dragged herself away, slow, but better than turning her face to the sun and waiting for a blade to fall.

  Why won't he say anything? That fucking screech, screech, screech...

  O'Dell's blade didn't fall. Instead, George's wheelchair stopped beside her, the sound just metal on the road, but not a blade. Simply rubber shredded from a steel wheel.

  Francis, half-blind from the flash, knew it was him, though it couldn'
t be.

  'George?'

  It couldn't be.

  When she'd left him two days ago, with food and drink on his lap, he'd been no more animated than a zombie. He hadn't been able to move at all.

  Now, though, he could. George reached out with a weak, shaking hand and Francis tried to raise her head toward his palm, desperate to know if he was real or if he, too, was just a cruel dream.

  When they touched, that was when he could speak and Francis could listen.

  Francis.

  Outside, there was only destruction. Inside, her fear was pushed aside and there was only George. Like a child might hold a parent's leg, not wanting them to go, Francis clung to George.

  I was afraid. But for myself. For me, she said. A thing she would never say aloud, and never to any other child.

  We're safe here, said George. Are you angry with Edgar? You shouldn't be. He's afraid, too.

  You're just a kid. But you're pretty smart.

  Yeah, he said in his voice, not that wiser, somehow older voice. I'm not a div.

  People think they can't smile in their thoughts. They're wrong.

  George? What they did to you? I don't know how we can go on. I think Edgar's dying. I'm a mess. You're...

  Don't sweat it, sister, said George. Just a flesh wound.

  He was right, too. She felt it. Where once his eyes were blank, now there was life. As he could see through her, she could see through him. Her body was on the road while they spoke, eyes closed. But she could still see.

  He was healing. He wheeled himself to her, didn't he? When she left, he could only take water.

  In just two days?

  He didn't answer, but his hand burned against her head. A warmth like a too-hot bath, making her head swim and her muscles give in.

  It's okay, Francis, he said. It's okay to sleep.

  Francis' strength and resolve broke and the last of that fight in her, innate, left. She tumbled all the way down to a long sleep, sheltered from the poisoned skies.

  *

  Edgar's watched the dead boy move, reach out. The kid was such a horrible mess that Edgar, at first, thought the kid was dead in charge of a wheelchair.