The Last Days

by Andy Dickenson

  His shop had been one of the most popular in the city until Lord Truth arrived. The city’s Saviour was, after all, capable of replicating any object, good as new, before he’d been killed. But it now seemed that Terry Timex, as Tucker liked to call him, was back in favour. Many of his wares already had “sold” tags beside them. Even the repairs desk in the corner was positively overflowing with laptops and computer pads for the engineer to work on.

  I guess, with Lord Truth gone, people just needed their stuff fixed again? Tucker thought.

  The apprentice knight sidled around the counter, past a row of cuckoo clocks that ticked loudly against the back wall. The sales space was similarly tidy, an electric till still blinking. Satisfied with his inspections, Tucker then turned to the door behind him and pulled it open. His throat heaved and he clenched the handkerchief to his face again. This, then, was the workshop, the scene of the crime.

  It was a room of horror, Tucker thought, his eyes adjusting to the dim light creeping under closed curtains, and far opposed to the immaculate display at the front of the store. Here, dark swathes of blood covered the walls, condensed on units and drawers. The watchmaker’s body, or what was left of it, slumped in a corner, his legs hanging from a heavy metal standard lamp that had been smashed on the other side of the room.

  “Cheesy freaking crap!” Tucker yelled.

  “You okay in there?” one of the guards called back.

  “Erm, no, I mean, cheesy freaking crap! Sure,” Tucker shouted.

  “We’ve checked the body, both bits, and he’s clean of the disease, if that helps?” the other guard shouted.

  “Yeah, yeah it does. Thanks,” Tucker answered, reassured that the guards, at least, were nearby. “But it’s not like having your own squad of knights to call on,” he murmured.

  The 15 year old turned his attention on the green felt table in the middle of the room. The workbench had obviously been at the centre of whatever battle the watchmaker had managed to put up. Tools and equipment were strewn across it and the desk itself was splintered by a long bow along its middle, probably where the werewolf’s victim had been held during the fight. It too was drenched with blood, but Tucker forced himself to look beyond that, at the implements remaining. A powerful magnifying glass on a metal arm was clamped to the table’s edge. Tucker found a switch on its cord and turned it on.

  The glass immediately swung into action, a powerful bulb on a pivot lighting much of the room. Tucker moved his hand across the desk and the magnifier followed. Angled at three joints, it seemed automated - stretching and collapsing itself according to his movements. Sensing them. Tracking them.

  He stared through the lens. It continued to trace the path of his finger as he pointed to the objects below, a female voice, similar to the computer at the city gates, annotating each one as his finger settled. “Circuit board, conductor, solar cell, two millimetre tweezers, point five millimetre spring,” it purred from a small speaker it its base.

  Apart from the talking magnifying glass, however, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Tucker began chasing through a set of drawers that sat next to a broken video monitor, its screen smashed with blood and pieces of skin welded to the glass. Still nothing.

  Tucker peered below the table, kicking aside a broken music box that clanked and whirled tunelessly in response. The floor was awash with tiny brass and electronic components, many of them emanating from devices that must have fallen from the surrounding shelves during the fight. One of the shelves had snapped and swung lazily from the wall.

  “Type one cog, quartz crystal resonator, one point five volt battery, five millimetre peg, field effect transistor, five millimetre heletical gear,” the lens could barely keep up with all the different elements it was scanning as Tucker crawled across the sticky carpet.

  “Green Albion crystal, two millimetre screw, type three cog, light detection and ranging sensor, semiconductor diode, digital video tape...”

  “What?” Tucker stopped crawling and wiped some blood from his gloved hand onto his jeans.

  “Digital video tape,” the magnifying glass repeated, angling over the desk to shine on a blue plastic box.

  Tucker picked up the case and opened it, discovering a grey tape with a news library reference. Well that’s weird, he thought, jamming the cassette into his back pocket. Just what were you doing stealing tapes from my library, Terry Timex?

  The knight’s apprentice stared at the familiar face of the watchmaker, a spider now inching over the bottom row of teeth in his open, gawping mouth. No wonder the corpse smelled so badly, his top half had landed by the fireplace, which was still hot and smouldering, an assortment of soldering irons gathered on the hearth. Tucker looked closer - stuck behind the cadaver, was a metal safe.

  Tucker smothered his mouth with the handkerchief and slowly dragged the watchmaker’s torso aside. “Sorry about that, T,” he mumbled, trying not to stare into the dead man’s eyes. He was heavy but manageable, a faint breeze wafting through the woollen curtain above him, the afternoon’s waning light catching on the body’s cracked spectacles.

  “Yeah, fresh air, that’s what we need,” Tucker said, patting Terry Callier on the shoulder and then pushing the window open further. Turning around, he unclamped the magnifying glass and attached it to the mantelpiece, the light of the lens swinging down to meet him. Tucker knelt and unclipped his sword to stop it bashing into the fireplace. He then felt for a pair of tweezers and stared through the glass at the safe’s lock.

  Oh well, be rude not to try, he checked back at the face of the watchmaker and smiled. I mean, you obviously had no qualms about stealing from me, right?

  And then he set to work, picking at the lock. Ten minutes later, the light had further diminished under the curtain, but what remained was rewarded by an audible click. Tucker ran his hand through his hair, a faint sweat collecting at his brow. “Say what you like about the size of my ass and the colour of my pants but when it comes to cracking locks, I really am the daddy,” he grinned before pulling the door wide open.

  A pile of parts, including a shiny white ball and what looked like a small arm twisting up and down and covered in brown felt, spilled out amid hundreds of wax credits.

  “Warning, explosive elements! Warning, explosive elements!” the magnifying glass began.

  “Holy guacamole!” Tucker exclaimed, scrambling away from the safe and taking up his sword. The boy stared at the strange ball, its only affectation a black dot, like a cartoon eye, and then the eerie arm as it shifted mechanically across the carpet.

  “Warning, explosive elements! Warning, explosive elements!” the automated lens continued.

  “Alright, alright,” Tucker replied, turning to switch the machine off by its dangling cord, just as the curtains were swept aside and the door blew shut.

  SLAM!

  “What the...”

  And Tucker glanced back, only to be knocked to the ground by a ball of brown fur with gnashing yellow teeth.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “DAMMIT, Missus Wiggins, you scared the crapola outta me!” Tucker threw the council’s tabby cat aside, his heart thumping so hard it threatened to burst through his armour.

  Missus Wiggins hissed and backed herself under the workbench where she mewled in pain. She had jumped through the open window and onto Tucker’s shoulder, her long claws snagging on his chain mail shirt.

  “Hey, you all right?” the Kings Guards rushed into the room.

  “Yeah, yeah fine,” Tucker breathed hard with his hands on his hips. “Just the cat, y’know,” he said, already embarrassed. “Kinda crept up on me.”

  The two guards smiled at each other before retreating. “Fine, well we’ll be outside, y’know, in case you see any hamsters,” one of them said, the other chuckling.

  Tucker blushed, his tension released in a prickling sweat that drenched his back. Yeah, good one, he thought.

  The last of the sun’s rays peeked through the curtains, latching onto the e
yeball that sat amongst a heap of Lutons on the carpet. The strange, twitching arm had caught itself on the bricks of the hearth, the magnifying glass remained static. Tucker felt for the videotape in his back pocket and then looked once again at the cat, shivering in the corner by Terry Callier’s detached legs.

  “It’s okay, kitty,” Tucker reached over and began stroking her, her gold bell tinkling as he tickled her neck. Taking off his leather gloves he could feel warm blood matting her tortoise shell coat, though he couldn’t detect a wound. “What the hell happened to you, Missus Wiggins? How come you’re not with...”

  And then he noticed the small note tucked beneath the cat’s collar. He pulled the paper out, unfolding it. It had the city clerk’s seal on it, the seal of Edwin Manifold.

  “Help!” it said, the words scrawled in an obvious hurry. “He’s found me!”

  .............

  “I swear I didn’t give anyone that monkey, Wilfred, I just...” Giles paused, his voice tired and frustrated. “I just told a few people about it, that’s all.”

  Sir Justice slotted his ball home on the eleventh green, his cowboy hat now casting a long shadow over the tall grass.

  “Nice putt,” Giles added grumpily as he finished plucking rowanberries from a small shrub.

  “Your generosity, seeing as my play over the last six holes has been straight out of the bottom drawer of my pants closet, is overwhelming,” the sheriff frowned.

  Giles said nothing but pocketed the last of the orange berries and wandered over to the next tee. He had two dead rabbits tied to the back of his golf bag and sprigs of hedge garlic and hairy bittercress poking from his belt. The two teardrops tattooed on his cheeks creased as he shielded his eyes from the dipping sun. “I don’t deserve this, Wilfred,” he said finally. “After all I’ve been through, everything I’ve lost.”

  “Hey, I’m two shots behind you and you don’t see me complaining.”

  The cook scowled, the colour rising in his cheeks. “I had a wife, Wilfred. A life I loved and a woman I loved it with. I had a child, a beautiful son. And they were all taken from me,” Giles shook his head. “Why, Wilfred? Why?”

  Sir Justice closed his eyes and sighed. “I cannae answer that, Giles, at least no better than anyone else can. But I do know we were told it would happen.”

  “What, by God?” the cook snorted. “Don’t make me laugh, Wilfred. Seriously, how you can believe in all that imaginary crap is beyond me. I mean, let’s face it, you’re gay for one thing.”

  Sir Justice was hobbling back to his golf buggy, his putter gathered to his crutches. “So?”

  “So, God hates gay people, Wilfred,” Giles laughed.

  Sir Justice smiled at him. “You think God hates me? I’ll have you know he loves my arse. He thinks I’m the dog’s nadgers! Have you nae read the book, Giles? He sacrificed his son for me. That’s the whole ruddy point!”

  The cook turned his back to the sheriff and walked past him.

  “People forget what the Bible is,” Sir Justice continued as he clambered back into the cart. “It’s a conversation between God and us, God and his people, Giles, and who’s to say it’s finished, eh, you?”

  Sir Justice drove to the elevated twelfth tee where Giles was now waiting for him, tossing a few blades of grass into the air to check the angle of the breeze, doing his best to ignore the sheriff.

  “Just because new words haven’t been written doesn’t mean that our relationship has ended. We’re all God’s people, Giles, it’s just that some of us don’t realise it and others differ on how we reach him. But his story goes on right now - with us.”

  “And that includes all this, does it?” the cook turned on him, his face flushed with anger. “The death of billions, Wilfred? My Marie? Tommy? Six!”

  The sheriff gazed at him sombrely. “Aye,” he said. “I’m afraid it does, yes. But this world was never ours to begin with, Giles. We just played our parts on it, that’s all.”

  “And what part do you think I played, Wilfred, Judas?”

  Sir Justice shrugged. “You tell me.”

  “So that’s why you brought me out here?” Giles sneered, swiping the air with his club. “To hear my confession? Sir Wilfred Justice, judge, jury and drunken executioner.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to save your granddaughter because you weren’t up to the job,” the sheriff barked. “Now who were these others, Giles? Who did you tell?”

  Giles rubbed at his eyes and watched as a magpie skipped onto the fairway. The bird stopped, as if it already knew exactly where to look, dug up a worm and then flew off with the creature squirming in its beak.

  “I’m two up,” he said finally, and then struck his ball, whipping it high and straight into the frosty air.

  “Aye,” Sir Justice growled. He’d been questioning the cook for an hour now and was yet to learn anything of any use. Anything that could help him find Six.

  “We’ve all lost people Giles,” he said, thoughts of his mother and father fresh in his mind, their faces as the blood plague took them. “You’re hardly alone in that.”

  “Yes, but I am alone aren’t I?” the cook spat back. “Because unlike you I don’t have some mystical almighty to keep me company, let alone some grey-faced superstar sent to save me with his bloody dark glasses and fancy skills.”

  Sir Justice let him simmer. Against his better judgment he selected a driver. He attempted a few practice strokes before settling down to punch the ball low and hard. Instead he brought his head up too early and clipped it, sending it skidding all of thirty feet.

  “Bobbins!” he yelled, expecting to see a look of triumph spreading over his opponent’s face. But Giles was still fuming.

  “I donnae understand,” Sir Justice picked up his crutches and headed back to the buggy to collect another club. “Why did you hate him so much, Lord Truth, I mean?”

  “Oh, what like you were a fan?” the cook replied sarcastically.

  “No, I thought he was a sanctimonious bell end,” Sir Justice took a three iron and smacked his second shot through the air with a mighty wallop. “But I didnae try to blow him to bits with a toy monkey.”

  Giles shook his head, walking away. “He stole my grand-daughter, Wilfred, ferried her away to join his cult of knights. The last person in this world I cared about, and he took her.”

  Sir Justice returned to his cart. “So what about these others,” he called out. “Your co- conspirators in this little revolt. What was their beef?”

  The cook had found his ball nestling in some long grass and selected a five iron. He polished it with a rag. Between spots of rust the club’s shaft glittered in the fading sunlight before his shadow loomed over it. “Dunno,’ he said finally. “I’m sure they had their reasons.”

  Sir Justice studied him for a moment. He knew he was lying. He knew there was more. And how much time do I have?

  He put his foot down on the accelerator, his bag threatening to belch out clubs from the passenger seat as the electric buggy responded, swinging round and crashing into the cook.

  “Ow! What the...”

  Sir Justice clambered out of the cart and grabbed Giles from the floor, throwing his body over the bonnet. “You need to stop playing me, Giles, because I thought you knew me better than that,” he screamed. “I’m the killer, right? The man who shoots defenceless people in the head just for knocking on our front door.”

  Pulling his six-shooter from his belt, he pressed it into the cook’s neck. “And because I know who you are, Giles. You’re a coward, you see. You’re a selfish bastard and you always have been. A coward who’s been too busy saving himself for the last hour to help me save his grand-daughter. So why don’t I just put us both out of our misery, eh?”

  The cook’s face was wet with panic. “You wouldn’t dare, you wouldn’t...”

  The sheriff cocked the gun’s safety.

  “You can’t save her,” Giles whimpered.

  Sir Justice pressed the six-shooter harder into the
folds of his neck. “WHO ARE THEY?” he bellowed.

  A patchwork of horse chestnut leaves whistled across the park. The sun was setting.

  Finally Giles relented. “Alright, okay,” he began as the sheriff relaxed his grip. “I received a postcard, and then a whole bunch of them. They were left in the kitchen by the back door, under the mat.” Sir Justice took a red crystal from his pocket and thrust it into the cook’s hands, in case one of the telepaths were listening. “At first they just said things, ‘He’s not who he says he is’, ‘He’s not our Saviour’, that kind of stuff. It was like they were opening a debate.” Giles stared at the crystal, at the space where his little finger was before his first meeting with the clockwork monkey. “I just joined in, that’s all.”

  The sheriff’s pipe was once again clenched between his teeth, his hands shaking as he lit it. “How?”

  “I’d write a message on the back of the card, place it where I found it, and the next day it would be gone,” the cook rubbed at his bruised neck and legs. “Then a couple of days later another would arrive with my message among many printed on the back. After a while, each card became like a notice board, as if they’d been put together by someone’s secretary.”

  Sir Justice stared at the cook, his chest heaving as his body calmed. A secretary?

  “They were like minutes of a secret meeting, all neatly printed out in separate paragraphs, each with different ideas, mine included.”

  “Different ideas of what?” Sir Justice pondered, the sweat glistening in his beard.

  “Of who he was,” Giles stared back at him, grey tracks of fresh tears lining his dirty face. “And how to stop him. I told them about the monkey bomb although I never thought anyone would be interested. But then I received loads of these messages wanting to use it. I wrote back explaining how long it had been up there in the safe, how dangerous it was, how the thing wouldn’t even go off without its trigger.”