Hunters & Collectors

by M. Suddain

  There was a whirring sound, a sickening thud, followed by a jet of blood on the wall I crouched against. Massimo spasmed and pitched forward on top of me. A fire axe hurled from the darkness had split his skull. A dozen new shadows charged into the arcade, and a furious battle ensued. I heard someone cry, ‘Mountain Men! No mercy!’ A man in a chef’s outfit was flung against a wall so hard he nearly went through it. The Mountain Men seemed to have deer antlers on their heads. I fought my way to the other side of the atrium. Voices said, ‘Tamberlain, come! We will return you to your Huntresses.’ Holy shit had this got out of hand. The new gang – who I could identify because they wore headdresses made from deer antlers – shielded me out of the atrium and on down the halls. Was this a trap? Were they only interested in getting my scalp? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I’ll spare you further details of the small battles we faced on the way back through the halls towards the elevators. But by the time we got close my axe was caked in gore. The smoke thickened again. Gladys took a good long look at me when we arrived. She looked at my blood-spattered shirt, the fire axe I still carried in one hand, and said: ‘I told you not to move.’

  ‘Huntresses,’ said a man in an antler hat, ‘we honour you and present you with this prize.’

  That was me. I was the prize.

  ‘Mountain Men,’ said one of the Huntresses, ‘we give thanks and will drink tribute with you when the battle is done.’

  This had all gone seriously fucking tribal, Colette.

  The Huntresses had suffered few casualties along the way. They sent a full canister of carbonox to fill the elevator atrium. We could see a rectangle of light from Elevator 2, and a heavy shape sitting on one of the purple love-seats. The shape sighed.

  ‘You know I can’t let you leave, folks. Guests have to check out through the system. You can’t take these memories out into the world.’

  ‘Sam, why can’t you admit you just can’t bear to see me go?’

  We heard Sam chuckle softly.

  ‘It’s over, Sam. We’re too strong for you.’

  ‘That so, Miss?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Well, it turns out Gladys was right, but only barely. It was one hell of a fight. Lightning bolts of darkness in the fog. Four brave Huntresses went down in the fight. My protector went to each of the still bodies to perform a small salute acknowledging their sacrifice. After that she went to Sam, who lay bleeding out near Car 2.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam. It’s nothing personal. Just doing my job.’

  ‘Every year.’ He coughed blood. ‘Every damned year it’s the same. Can’t we all just get along for once? Like a family? Well, I suppose I’ll be seeing you round and around.’ With a bloody finger he stirred the breathless air.

  In the lobby we found an army of Huntresses. Hundreds. They’d built a command centre. Women in black came running in with slips of yellow which they passed to a stern-looking woman who seemed to be running things there. ‘Holy fuck, G.’

  ‘I know. Things kind of got out of hand.’

  ‘No shit!’

  They had Shabazzniov tied up.

  ‘Well, Mr Tamberlain, you look a picture.’

  I wiped my face with my handkerchief. ‘Hello, Murial, we were just leaving.’

  ‘I’d like to say I’ve enjoyed your little visit. I have not.’

  ‘Love fades, Murial. It always does.’

  ‘We have to get to the pod before they regroup, John.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jonathan.’

  ‘Goodbye, Murial.’

  If you want this to be a happy story, Colette, stop now. Because it could have ended an infinite number of ways, but this way doesn’t end with us all happy, and with everything tied up neatly. As our escape-pod cut a ribbon of bubbles through the black ocean, I caught a glimpse of something which might have been a hotel, or might have been a kind of sea creature: a pod-shaped structure, long lappets waving below, fading into the darkness. But it’s hard to say I saw anything.

  ‘Well … that was quite a little trip. This pod’s a little small, though, right? What do you think, Beast? Shall I call reception and complain?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s a little … small.’ He was staring at G. Had been since we’d got back to the pod. She’d put him out of action by pressing a sequence of bio-meridians on his body. But as soon as she released him he started staring. And now she was staring at her own hand.

  ‘Well, John, I suppose this is almost it.’

  ‘Hmmm? What do you mean “almost it”?’

  ‘I just want to say I’m sorry. It had to be this way.’ Staring at her bloody right hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Gladys. We’re alive. Thanks to you and your witch brigade, we don’t have to spend eternity in that …’ And then I saw it. The hand flickered. Just for a hair’s-width of time. Then I got a flash of the green leather seatback. ‘… place. The fuck?’

  ‘There was no other way, John. It had to be this way. It was you or me.’

  ‘The fuck, Gladys?’ She flickered, stuttered, resolved herself, and as she did her favourite green scarf fell gently from her neck and onto the seat. ‘The fuck is going on here? Beast?’

  ‘Nicely played, G.’

  ‘Catch you round, Daniel.’

  ‘Gladys?’

  ‘Listen, let’s not go and do a whole “thing”, John. This is just how it had to be. They wouldn’t let you go unless I stayed. So you need to get used to not having me here.’

  She was talking tough, as always, Colette, but now her eyes were filling up. She couldn’t help it. Forever is a lot to take on any day.

  ‘You tricked me, Gladys.’

  ‘No, Boss.’

  ‘If that’s what you want to think, John … ink whatever you want…. ike I’ve always …’

  ‘Wait, no, let’s slow down. I didn’t mean it. This is … fuck, this is happening too fast.’

  ‘… as too, Jonathan … ave a job to do … en agreed to stay so th … et you go … mpossible t …’ Now she was blinking and flickering like a bad broadcast picture as we streaked up towards the surface, while her scarf lay quietly coiled on the seat.

  ‘No. No, this can’t be right. We have to go back. Right, Beast?’

  ‘I’m sssssssss.’ She hissed in the air, resolved. ‘… ust want you to know that I’ll alwssssss …’

  ‘No, you can’t go. I can’t do this without you, Gladys. I can’t do anything right without you.’

  ‘I know.’

  Like the lady said, Colette, let’s not do a whole “thing”. There’s no point detailing those dying moments. They’re worse than anything I saw at that hotel. And there was nothing left to say, anyway, and no time to say it. We just sat there and watched each other happen and unhappen. Outside it was completely dark. No evidence that life ever had, or ever would, exist. Her eyes, and what was contained in them, were an unbearable horror. In dark moments, when I want to torment myself, I go back there. And I don’t care what anyone says, I couldn’t look at those eyes and tell they weren’t real. We were filthy in that cabin. Grubby as children. Our clothes and hands were covered in blood and gore and soot. Ribbons of black and green and blue were meshing down her face. Soon all that was left was a green silk scarf. A cruel trick. Kindness, in its way, is the ultimate form of violence. Her act of kindness ensured I’d live a long life, and that I’d feel pain and loss for almost every moment of it. And I still don’t understand what happened, or why, after all the promises of being wiped clean, I was allowed to go away with these memories.

  Or maybe it didn’t end that way. Maybe we all escaped together. Maybe we made it back to the surface and went on in each other’s company. Our unholy trio had a few days, or even weeks, of pure ecstasy, where we hid and drank and shook our heads at what had happened. Then eventually we moved on to the next job, the next case, until the thrill of what had happened faded, as all thrills fade. We grew older, even less tolerant of each other’s traits and tricks. If that’s possible. We all became estranged.
And eventually, incrementally, we drifted apart.

  So tell me, Colette. Which of those endings is less tragic? Choose whichever ending is the least unbearable and move forward with it.

  Somewhere down there, in the Battles, sits the wreck of the Basilisk. When that boat went down it took scores of young lovers. They died horribly together; but mercifully, too. Their love, their dreams and their hopes were preserved for eternity. Those beautiful youths never had to watch love fade. They never had to learn the unbearable truth life tells us: that the universe has infinite quantities of love, and hope, and happiness to give. Just not to us.

  I’ll sign off because I have to catch a boat. As I said, I’m in the East. The Far East. I’m maybe further east than any Westerner has gone. There are no tourists here, and no one even speaks my language. It’s a wonderful, unspoiled and in many ways unspeakable place. I fear for my life daily, but not for my soul. Who knows if this will even reach you. I have no proof you even existed in the first place. I’ve grown a beard. I met a man, a kind of guru, who never speaks. I went to a temple where preserved heads of martyrs whisper truths you don’t want to hear. It’s amazing the places you can travel when you stop caring if you live or die. I still care enough to hope. Could she find me here? Probably. If anyone could. Could I hatch a plan to go back and get her? That’s possible too, I suppose. Maybe I can find her friends, the Water Bears. It’s possible. They said I’d never find the Empyrean, and I did.

  But I have never, nor will ever, talk about her in the past tense. She is alive. She breathes and moves around and scowls and pretends to hate the world. And let me be clear, Gladys and I were never in love like those children on the Basilisk. That’s the real tragedy. I’ve come to see that what we had was better than that pitiful and pitiless intoxication they call love. It is the joy you have to truly know someone. To know another person as well as you know yourself, and to be happy to be unhappy in their company. To fall in love with someone you have to be blinded to their truth. It’s easy to fall for fantasies. But to know someone, and to want to know them, is truly the deepest honour we have as beings. To know another is a sacred duty. Maybe that’s why I spend a lot of time at airports now, at bars near the gates, watching as the little crowds of otherness arrive, scanning the dark faces for a pale, painted, scowling one. Because like everyone I want one more chance. I’d give anything for it.

  Or maybe I just like airports.

  In any case, if they ever do make a cine-movie of this, they most likely won’t use my ending. They’ll probably give it a happier ending. That’s the way the world is now. The ships come in. People come bubbling out. The crowds part. I look up from my drink to see her standing there. I smile at her. She smiles at me. And then we fade to black.

  I’m sorry. The drinks have made me melodramatic. They always do. It’s a warm night, and the drinks are strong and cold. Is there a better sensation than being alive in a place no one alive can find you? The sky is a milky abyss. Moonlight on a foggy mirror. The nearest sun has dipped behind a city. The birds in their cages have gone silent. If I’m lucky there’ll be a Harvest party later. Life is good.

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  Epub ISBN: 9781448130917

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  Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,

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  Jonathan Cape is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Copyright © M. Suddain 2016

  M. Suddain has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Jonathan Cape in 2016

  www.penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9780224097048