“Whereas you,” Knight Two laughed, “are an apprentice. A Knight Second Class. And frankly, who cares what you and everyone else thinks?”
“Hey!” Six started.
But that’s what he said. That’s what they always said.
And now they were all gone. Lost forever. Toast.
Tucker felt a fresh wave of nausea swell within him and he looked back at Six for comfort. She was still sleeping. Tucker wondered what she was dreaming about. Whether she was haunted by the same nightmares he was having. He shifted in his chair, trying to shake off the funk before it settled, refocusing on the movie instead.
His favourite part of the film was already long over: the opening credits as the camera soared over Hong Kong. Even as Kelly stepped out onto a bustling Kowloon street, the young Tucker had been in awe, not of his hero, but of the world these actors inhabited. The sweeping majesty of the skyscrapers, cramped highways full of cars, bikes and rickshaws jostling for space as airplanes screeched overhead. These were things he’d never see, a life he could only imagine.
Above him a set of security screens flickered into life but Tucker was oblivious. He thought about Six. What had happened in London. Six used to have this confidence, this inner strength that could stare you down and almost convince you that everything was all right, no matter what. But not any more.
Lord Truth used to say that they had been born into a world clinging on by its fingernails - the only hope the knights had of survival was in each other. And now there were just two of them. And he wasn’t even qualified.
Unknown to Tucker, Six was now awake. She lay still, listening to the sound effects of the film. She too had watched it many, many times. She knew every kick, every punch. Even Lee’s victorious battle cries were logged in her brain; much like that Jim Kelly routine she and Tucker had practiced until they could perform it blindfold.
Quietly, she looked across at the boy she had known since forever and marvelled at how much he’d grown. Can I still even call him a boy? she thought. No longer skinny but wiry and athletic, he was even beginning to resemble a younger version of his hero.
Tucker thrust his left arm forward in a fighting stance and shook his head, contorting his face in a wild exaggeration of the actors’ death screams, tiny muscles popping in his neck. Six stifled a grin and turned to stop herself from laughing. She then gazed out of the tower’s massive arched window, its art deco frame caked in dirt and rust.
A beautiful falcon sailed past. The peregrine’s feathers tickling the soggy wind as she arched her back, stretching her pointed wings in time to catch another current and wheel around the gigantic transmitter, dodging the last of the rain’s bullets.
Beyond the bird, Six could make out the castle turrets, while nearby the farm’s enormous biodomes bathed the city in a golden light. In between, strings of cable stretched from one tower to the next carrying colourful passenger cars over the golf course, the fairground, the boating lake, even their barracks.
The barracks.
Just the thought of them and the faces of the other knights bobbed to the surface of her mind: images of them in training, patrolling and on missions. She too had not returned home, instead choosing to sleep in her old room at Al’s Bar, although she preferred it here. It was only when she was with Tucker that Six felt safe nowadays.
Six frowned. Weeks before she had spent the night in the Royal Castle, after a party in the knights’ honour. And now this - a mattress on the floor and stinking sheets.
Again, she turned to look at the younger boy as he shuffled under his blanket. He’s like my little brother really, she thought, although I can’t believe he’s gotten taller than me. Rotten swine.
Absent-mindedly, Six picked her nose and tried to remember her dreams. She was going somewhere, running away, when she had caught a glimpse of something. Something unexpected.
Six remembered how her grandpa once told her that when you sleep you actually only dream every few hours.
“And, even then, though the dream may feel like hours,” he said, “it actually lasts only a few seconds.”
So, if that’s the case… she wondered.
“Thwack! Slap! Hyiieourrr!” Bruce Lee yelled, beating up four guards on the television screen.
… How come I always wake-up half way through them?
She continued to ponder the thought as the fighter continued on his rampage through a tunnel and Tucker, totally immersed in the battle, dipped his hand blindly into the crisp packet.
Six felt the beginnings of a pimple rising on her cheek and winced. She felt fragile, frustrated, like she had heard a distant warning somewhere in her sleep that she failed to remember. She closed her eyes but all she could see was the face of the grinning monkey with the steel teeth.
She quickly tried to wipe the image from her thoughts.
Don’t think of it!
The face of the clockwork monkey.
Stop it! Don’t think of it, I can’t think of it! she told herself.
The bomb that had killed Lord Truth.
Six blinked her large blue eyes under long, gummy eyelashes. She was determined this morning she was not going to cry.
She listened to the television again. Lee was now whipping a nunchuk through the air. The baton swirled under his shoulder, across his chest, over his back. Soon, Six remembered, he would become trapped in a cavern, when an unfamiliar noise cut over the film’s soundtrack.
“This is Warden 26 calling broadcast control,” the voice crackled amid the fuzz of a walkie-talkie unit. “Yeah, we’re gonna need a TV down here and a death rites transmission. Hey Tucker, you’re not asleep again, are you?”
Six rolled over as Tucker, the last of the crisp packet now cascading from his lap, reached for the intercom mic and jammed his finger down on the button: “Huh?”
The two teenagers then stared at the blue/white monitor screen above Tucker’s head, its picture zooming in on a bearded man’s face, blood trickling from a hole in his temple.
Tucker frowned. “Hey! Who’s the dead guy on our porch?”
Chapter Four
TUCKER stamped his feet to keep warm as the wind bullied him. Here, trapped behind the great gates beneath the crumbling walls of Albion, the air took on a life of its own, pushing and shoving. Until finally the huge doors staggered open, their metre-long hinges creaking, and the wind rushed past to reveal the two wardens waiting impatiently beyond.
“About bloody time,” one of the men muttered.
“Good to see you too, Sid,” the boy replied.
Tucker lurched forward, the weight of a TV set already heavy in his arms. It had been a long time since he’d been out in the burial mounds, and it had taken him an age to find a spare that worked. Tucker shifted the machine uneasily as he watched the first man piling a corpse into a rusty wheelbarrow. Blood still dripped from the body’s forehead and pooled in the snow.
Tom, the second warden, did nothing to help. Instead he just stared at Tucker with two spades slung over his shoulder. “Tucker, what on earth do you think you’re wearing?” He coughed and cleared his throat, “Hok, hok! You’re not even dressed!”
Not even dressed?
Tucker looked down at his suede trainers, jeans and the flapping ends of his baggy cardigan that poked out from under a battered rain jacket. Pretty good for a quick turnaround, he thought.
However, gazing at the two wardens, he realised this wasn’t a question of fashion. Both wore insulated space suits, muddy and yellowing with age. Their joints ballooned under thick padding, their heads tiny beneath domed helmets. They looked ridiculous.
Tucker stifled a grin. “The guy’s dead isn’t he?” he said, nodding at the corpse.
Tom coughed again and glanced over at the cadaver, its arms and legs draped over the side of the barrow. “Dead as everything else round here.”
“Well then, the virus is dead within him, there’s no need for all that protective clobber,” Tucker shrugged. “Let’s go.”
The two warde
ns shook their heads as if they’d heard the argument many times yet still found it incredulous. “Suit yourself,” Tom muttered, and they began walking.
“Honestly, Tom,” Sid had switched his communicator on so his partner could hear him clearly. “You’d think these people had never heard of the blood plague.”
Tucker adjusted his own headset as the warden continued. “Anyways, where was I before we was interrupted? Oh yeah, so I said to her ‘Daphne, do you know how much one of those tree house apartments is gonna cost?’”
“Cost you an arm and a leg in this job, Sid.”
Tucker fell quickly behind them, the TV set, decades old and built like an orange ball, crashing against his legs and slowing his stride. He shivered violently. Even though he was certain he didn’t need the safety gear the wardens were wearing, he wished he’d at least brought a scarf. It was freezing.
He thrust the TV set under his left arm and flipped the communicator switch on his belt, cutting off the wardens’ chatter as he switched to another channel. His headset crackled. “Six, you read me?” he said into the small mic by his lips.
“Loud and clear, Tucks.” Back in the broadcast tower, Six had draped herself in a duvet and was squeezing into his seat. “Your teeth are chattering in stereo.”
The knight had patched the bank of screens into a security loop - allowing her to access the myriad of surveillance cameras that littered the burial mounds. “How long’s it been since our last visitor?” she wondered aloud as she zoomed in on the corpse.
“Eighteen months maybe?” Tucker replied, his voice relayed through the speakers above her. “I didn’t even think the mountains were passable this time of year.”
“Me neither,” Six nodded, her fingernails meeting the static of the main monitor, tracing the outline of the dead man’s face. “Another death,” she said quietly. “Another man we couldn’t save.”
“Yeah,” Tucker agreed glumly. Unconsciously, he had begun twisting the cross he always wore around his neck.
“But it shows they’re out there, doesn’t it?” Six pressed. “More survivors, I mean?”
“Maybe,” the boy shrugged. “He sure did go to a lot of trouble to get here.”
Tucker dawdled, watching the corpse’s mouth lolling open, his head rocking back over the cart. They were already trampling over burial plots - a few, nearer the gates like these, marked by stones laid by family members, but most signalled only by the endless rows of anonymous wooden crosses.
I wonder how many rotting bodies are below me? Maybe thousands, he thought, perhaps tens of thousands?
Then Tom yelled: “Hurry up, Tucker, the dead haven’t got all day!” And the boy began jogging to catch up.
But it wasn’t just Six watching the progress of this odd funeral cortege. A pile of monitors in the children’s clubhouse displayed the same images.
Neon Way sat within a circle of the children. Each wore helmets made of strips of metal and wire, bolted together. And within these skeletal frames the strange crystals pulsed out of time, each with a different colour.
The young girl stared as the tears spilling from her face were soaked up by her favourite party dress. She sniffed, trying to control them, but the fact the yellow frock was getting ruined just made her feel worse. Her face reddened and she tipped her head back and wailed, the helmet’s strap tightening around her neck as the metal crown slipped over her pigtails.
Her cries were beginning to upset a few of the other children, who were sniffling along with her, each of their crystals throbbing in response. Out of the darkness a girl reached across with a handkerchief and dabbed at Neon’s eyes. But beside her, Tim, a taller, curly haired boy with freckles, scowled, the vermillion stone above his head glowing intensely.
Between these two, a crippled child, dressed in a blue romper suit, looked up at Neon through thick-rimmed glasses. Frown lines were creeping across Oric’s large, bald head and his mouth hung open at one side, dribble stringing from his lips.
His thoughts tumbled around them, echoing off the walls of the tiny clubhouse, though he himself could barely walk. “What’s the matter, Neon? Why do you feel such pain when your knowledge spans so far beyond such simple things as these?”
Neon sat crossed-legged and smothered another sob. She felt sympathy in the boy’s question, but she was aware that other, less charitable glances had also fallen upon her. Each child’s mouth now remained tightly shut, like the thick stitching on their hand-me-down clothing.
“There’s no need for remorse,” Oric continued, as though his sentiments focused the group. “There’s no need to hurt us, Neon. In truth you know death, a wandering hand that must be dealt, sooner or later.”
“Preferably sooner in some cases,” Tim chimed in, his dark words tinged in the vermillion glow pulsing above his head.
A loud, angry cacophony then burst from the shadows, each child’s thoughts incomprehensible as they battled for psychic space. The pulse of the crystals quickened, sending bolts of electricity through the wires that linked the chain of metal helmets, bathing the séance of small bodies in blue light.
Together their babbling arguments reached a frank conclusion. “Stop crying! Stop guarding your mind against us! We want to play!”
Again taking control, the curly-haired boy sneered. “What kind of behaviour is this for a princess?”
With his audacity the onslaught stalled, the children’s thoughts straining for unity. Neon felt the energy in the room shifting as her more sensitive allies turned from her to the stronger, scalding force. Then the children’s words descended on her again in a torrent: “Cry baby princess doesn’t want to play! Cry baby princess doesn’t want to have fun! Maybe we should send her out with the corpses? Dig her a grave! Then she’ll be happy!”
Ostracised, Neon collapsed in front of them and drew her knees to her chest. Above her electricity crackled as it travelled through a central column linked to each child’s crown. The snapping light sparked and fizzed as it was collected, drawing the faces of the children from the darkness in cold, fleeting glimpses.
Neon shuddered uncontrollably, Brian the teddy bear now discarded. She said nothing but her thoughts remained glued to the face of the dead man, locked in a plea for mercy as the bullet rent his skull.
............
Tucker struggled to lift the dead man’s legs as he helped Sid toss him into a shallow grave. This guy’s enormous, Tucker thought. No wonder he managed to get this far. I wonder where he came from? What he wanted?
He stared at the corpse that seemed to stare back at him, it’s expression altered slightly, as if...
“Hok, hok!” Tom coughed and cleared his throat in that hacking sound that was fast becoming a habit. “Bit of a treat this, isn’t it, Sid, having a knight come help us?”
“Knight’s apprentice,” Sid corrected him, planting a wooden cross by the body’s head.
“Oh yes,” Tom sneered.
Tucker ignored them and fetched the TV, placing it by the graveside. He then dropped to his knees and pulled a screwdriver from his pocket.
“Hok, hok! Is that the best monitor you could get?”
“Fraid so,” Tucker said and he began unscrewing a panel at the back of the machine. “We’re running low on TVs and computers since Lord Truth,” he paused, his head dropping, “y’know...”
“Running low on bloody everything,” Sid mumbled.
He was right, of course. Though, to be honest, Tucker thought, this television must’ve been an antique long before Albion was even dreamed of.
He felt the cold seeping into his jeans as he slid the curved shield back from the screen and caught the crystals Tom threw at him. “Just about to fire her up, Six,” he said into his comms unit.
“Right,” came her yawned response.
They had walked about a mile into the hills, almost as far as the train stop. Further still was the old coach park where, long before Tucker was born, tourists used to arrive for the “holiday of a lifetime�
�. Buried under metres of snow, the cars and buses now formed rippled valleys, the odd flagpole poking above the surface.
Tucker scratched his head as he looked over the city and the fortress walls that surrounded it. It was hard to believe Albion was once a haven for tourists, rather than refugees. “Sure doesn’t look like a theme park anymore,” he said under his breath.
“Theme park?” Tom snorted, closer than Tucker thought. “Hok, hok! The only ride anyone ever gets to take here is this one,” and he began shovelling dirt over the corpse.
Tucker looked up at the spittle spots stuck to the inside of the man’s visor, and then down at cadaver, mud and snow landing on its chest.
“Ride we’ll all get to take,” Sid agreed, next to him. “From this world to the next.”
Tucker pulled some wires out of the back of the old TV and began fiddling with a blue crystal. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea what religion this guy was, then?”
“How should I bloody know, Tucker?” Sid replied, sprinkling yet more slush and mud over the body, though it was so large they were barely covering it. “Odd looking feller though isn’t he?”
Tucker glanced again at the visitor, his head still exposed as his back lay contorted over the rocky earth. His sharp teeth protruded from his still gaping jaws. Almost like he’s laughing at us, Tucker thought, as another splash of dirt fell loosely over him.
“That’ll do,” Tom decided with a shrug. “Snow’ll do the rest.”
“You don’t want to search his pockets?” Sid asked his partner.
“Shhh, not now you idiot!” Tom hissed. “Don’t know who’s listening do we?”
The warden glared at Tucker, who suppressed a smile before flicking on his communicator. “Hey, Six, you transmitting yet?”
Back in the broadcast tower, Six slipped a battered tape marked Death Rites – All Religions into one of the video players. “Yes, it’s in there, Tucks.”
She then giggled as she pressed the intercom. “Now, what was that about a search? You will, of course, report all valuables to the King’s Office, won’t you, Warden 26? That is unless this chap’s got anything pretty. Does he look like he has anything pretty?”
The Last Days Page 3
