by Rhys Thomas
Charlie pulled the hand into the centre of the white light. He already knew what had happened but he had to make sure. He owed the old doctor that much.
The doctor’s jacket had red circles of blood around the neat tears in the material. Actually they weren’t quite circles. They looked more like the shape of carnations: circular with jagged edges. He glimpsed a glowing green light beneath the sleeve of Dr Balad’s white lab coat. He rolled the waxy cloth away. It was a chunky diver’s watch with a digital face. Large black numbers ticked away the seconds.
Above, the sound of footsteps not moving quickly, not moving slowly, came down the spiralling stone staircase. Up there was where the violent people were kept.
Charlie unclipped Dr Balad’s watch. It was ticking backwards to zero. With the watch fastened to his own wrist, and the responsibility of the doctor’s final task now passed to him, Charlie turned to run.
When the voice called to him, his breathing slowed. He turned back and looked at the man who had killed the doctor and the helpless victims in Emily’s ward.
‘All the time I’ve been here,’ said the man, ‘nobody really knew what I could and couldn’t do. They didn’t see my true nature, or at least a demonstration of it, and so they always hoped there was something good in me they could bring out. And I was allowed to stay. But look what I’ve done.’
Mims stepped into the white rectangle of light and held up two blood-soaked palms. A large knife was balanced precariously between the fore and middle finger of his left hand. A cold and repugnant smile split his face.
‘People thought that when the doctors cut me open they extracted my humanity, that the way I was was in some way to be blamed on their demented sciences. But it was never true. I was bad before. All the doctors did was allow me to become the person I always was. And it doesn’t even matter. With no reason, nothing matters. Nothing ever did.’
Down the hill David saw a woman with two children sliding across the mud, in plain sight. He ran out to her without thinking.
‘Hey,’ he called. ‘Come on, follow me. You can’t be out in the open like this.’
Another explosion, this one close by, boomed around them. David fell into the mud and quickly lifted himself up. He took the mother and children to the wall of the car park. Focusing his attention on getting the young family to something like safety, he led them along the wall to the beach. Maybe they could get out that way. The mother clutched the youngest child, a boy, to her chest. The little girl held on to her coat tails, just a silhouette in the mist.
It seemed like the whole camp was on fire. He couldn’t tell where the mist ended and the smoke began. There was screaming all around him. Just keep going, he told himself. Just keep going.
Hours had passed. A few times the guns had been so loud they shook the flimsy steel frame of their refuge. At other times the noise had lulled and Miriam thought that maybe the fighting was over and a new chapter was about to begin. But it always started up again. When it did Mary would snap awake. Her little head would shoot up off the mattress and she would look around in confusion. Neither Miriam nor her mother slept, not with the knowledge that Edward was out there.
The air was so cold that her breath condensed on it. Outside the window the ethereal silver mist was swirling against the glass. It was no longer still. When the door handle finally moved, Miriam and her mother both reacted with an involuntary intake of breath. There was somebody outside. At last their time had come.
Joseph had always told her this day would arrive, that one day the bad men would gain power and that she needed to be ready for it. But here she was now, unarmed and unguarded. She was defenceless.
The person on the other side of the door threw themselves bodily into it. The whole campervan rocked backwards under the force. Even in the gloom Miriam could see the dent in the door.
Mary woke with a start. Miriam’s mother went to her and held her in her arms. There was another massive bang and the dent in the door bulged further. Miriam knew what was happening. The person on the other side of the door was ill.
‘Leave us alone.’
Her voice was shrill and weak. The large windows in the van didn’t open and there was nothing to smash them with. They were trapped.
The banging stopped. Miriam held her breath and tried to listen for movement.
A shattering explosion of air cracked loud. The lock was blown off in a metallic clang and something lodged itself in the wall behind them. They had a gun. Miriam fell back on the bed.
In he came. He stopped in the doorway and seemed to sniff the air. And then his black, shadowed head turned to Miriam.
‘Found you,’ he said.
She knew the voice. It was slower and deeper but it definitely belonged to the same man she had helped all those months ago; the man Joseph said he had killed but whom he had spared.
‘Paul?’
‘Stop calling me that.’ His voice was a scream. All cadence rushed out of it.
Miriam froze with shock.
And then his voice became slow and heavy again.
‘It’s not my real name. I told you that.’
Miriam dared not move from her position on the bed. What little light there was glinted off the silver plating of the small handgun he was holding.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Here we are. I’ve been looking for you for hours.’
His body seemed taller than before but his frame was still emaciated. Miriam didn’t know if she should talk to him or not. She said nothing.
‘Remember that day when your husband threw me out? I told him to kill me. I told him I would just come back, but you know what he did? He gave me a sleeping bag and water.’
The inside of her mouth became moist.
‘Do you think I should have been grateful for that?’
‘Please let us go.’
‘Why should I have been? He had already beaten me to within an inch of my life, humiliated me, and then he thought he could make it all better by letting me go at the end. But you know what? I’ve always been the sort of person who can’t let go of things. I keep the most terrible grudges. And that’s why I had to find you.’
There was a burst of gunfire outside the van. With the door wide open the sound was ear-shattering. But it did not affect Crowder.
‘I can’t forgive your husband for what he did, nor can I forgive the pitiful way you looked at me.’
Miriam felt sick now.
‘Why do you pity me? Hmm? You are no better than me. And yet you really do think you are. But let me tell you: you were only in that big house whilst I was on the roads because of chance. I’m a better survivor than you. You could not last out there like I have. It is me who should pity you and your ridiculous compassion. I will die. I can feel it inside me. All I want to do is make sure I take you with me.’
Suddenly and quickly Crowder jumped backwards. He hopped deftly down the steps of the campervan and pulled something up. He had somebody with him. It was a woman. Miriam saw her long hair through the mist. She was tied and gagged. Crowder cut her bonds and forced her into the campervan. He roughly yanked off her gag and threw her on to the bed.
Mary screamed and Miriam’s mother rubbed her back to soothe her.
The woman sat up on the bed. She moved easily and with grace.
‘Please, you don’t have to do this,’ she said quietly. Her voice was warm and exotic.
Miriam watched her place her hair behind her ears.
‘Now,’ said Crowder. ‘Line up against the wall.’
This is just another test but this time I feel prepared. I am ready for this, he thought. A cold hatred, built up over the months, was reaching its pinnacle. The part of him that had denied it, ignored it, fought against it, had gone.
‘I told you this place would collapse,’ said Mims. Droplets of blood dappled his face.
‘You killed them,’ Charlie said.
‘I can’t help myself. It’s just an urge I have now.’
They were standing far
enough away from each other that were Mims to strike Charlie would have time to prepare.
‘I told you I was going to kill you.’
Mims stepped quickly to his right. Charlie did the same to keep the distance between them.
‘Don’t you feel betrayed by the way this place has fallen? It all happened as I said it would. You ripped yourselves apart.’
He moved right again. Charlie followed. They were making their way around the edges of an invisible circle with Dr Balad at its centre.
‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’
They moved again. Charlie could see the open door behind which Mims had been kept. He couldn’t have escaped himself. Dr Balad must have let him go. The old man had trusted Mims.
‘All of this needn’t have happened. You had one of their people, Charlie. One of the men in black clothes. The good doctor was kind enough to keep me informed. He thought that by telling me these things I might change, I might become a good person. And the people of the camp beat the poor man to death,’ Mims said with a relishing smack of his lips. ‘Don’t you see? If the people of this camp had been able to show just a little restraint’ – he hissed the ‘s’ in the middle – ‘then this attack would not have happened. If these people that you and all the others like you trust so dearly had not shown themselves for what they truly are, then you and I would not be standing here, the doctor would still be alive and all would be well with the world. All I do is reflect what other people truly are. I’m just a mirror. This camp was always going to fail. Add people to any system and watch it fall.’
He moved again.
Charlie’s back was now to the base of the staircase leading up into the tower.
‘You’re not a mirror,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re just a prick.’
Mims lunged. He flew over the doctor’s body. Charlie put his arm up to block. A white pain seared across it. Mims had slashed him with the knife. He felt the skin on either side of the blade’s path slip away and warm blood flow.
He fell back under Mims’s weight. When they hit the floor Charlie used the momentum to roll over. He brought his knee up and crow-barred his body from Mims. With enough space between them he used the soles of his feet to push him off.
Mims fell away but recovered quickly. He lunged again for Charlie. Charlie rolled away from him and managed to get to his feet. His leg bolted with pain. He reached his arm out and caught Mims’s knife hand with his wrist, just knocking it off course. The blade whooshed ferociously past his ear. There was an intense, alien strength in his assailant. His energy was alive and wild.
But Charlie felt the same thing inside him now. This was easy. With his free hand Charlie grabbed the back of Mims’s head. The blood from his arm dropped on to Mims’s face and Charlie fell backwards, slamming the top of Mims’s head into the stone steps.
He got to his feet. Mims was still breathing. He had rolled back down to the stone floor, near the edge of the rectangle of white light. He clambered on hands and knees and made a strange, low noise like a donkey braying.
Shaking now, Charlie began to ascend the steps of the lighthouse. They were very steep. Intermittently he came to a thin, wooden door, behind which lay the infected people who would become violent. He didn’t know why he climbed, he just climbed.
The steps went on and on into the interminable sky. Already he could hear Mims chasing him. His leg hurt badly and the sleeve of his bloody arm was soaked through and heavy. He came at last to the final bend in the narrow staircase. Ahead of him a low light threw uncertain shadows on the steps until he reached the summit of his climb and he came to a heavy, wood-framed door with glass panels. Past it were three giant lamps encircled by a grated metal gantry. Thick black wires curled over the metal railings near the lamps, leading into sturdy power boxes. He was at the top of the lighthouse.
Tall glass windows, taller than Charlie himself, wrapped themselves around the giant lamps and gantry. Beyond them the silver mist felt its way along the glass, looking for weaknesses; a way in.
Charlie climbed up to the gantry and walked slowly round it. He ran his hand along the smooth metal railing. On the far side he came to a glass door. It was open and he passed silently through it into the night.
He was standing on a narrow balcony. The floor was made of the familiar whitewashed blocks. The round, salt-pocked railings that skirted the platform were cold and rusting. The mist was so thick he couldn’t even see the ground below. If he fell it was possible he would fall for ever.
He turned back and watched Mims come. His dark shadow appeared in the doorway and moved silently round the gantry inside towards the glass door. Down in the valley the sound of human screams came from the dark.
Charlie could see the mist clearly against the glass. Within it were many patterns and eddies, each one seemingly independent of the next, each cutting its own path. But beyond that, beyond the individual patterns, he saw something else. It was moving generally as one. All the little swirls were following one route. Upwards. The mist was rising.
Mims came to the glass door and looked through it. His face was daubed with blood from Charlie’s arm. Charlie smiled to him and waved and Mims nodded. He surveyed Charlie from head to toe and then, without ceremony, stepped outside.
‘Whoever you are, whatever your name is, please let us go.’
She didn’t know why she was pleading. She knew she was no longer speaking to a human being. The barrier between him and chaos had been obliterated.
‘You,’ he said, addressing Miriam’s mother. ‘Give the child to your daughter.’
It was all happening too quickly. Crowder had something in mind but he was not taking time to savour it. The air was distressed and distended with panic.
‘Don’t.’ Miriam thought she might pass out.
All four of them were sitting with their backs against the far wall. The pathetic fort of pillows and blankets stood between them and the looming edifice that was Crowder. His outstretched arm held the gun steady and still.
Mary was passed from Miriam’s mother, across the lady Crowder had brought, and into Miriam’s arms. Her little body was heavy and she had wet herself. But she did not cry. She was so still. Had her eyes not been open Miriam would have thought she was sleeping.
‘Miriam,’ he said. When he spoke her name her skin contracted over her bones. ‘Choose. In three seconds I will shoot both of them, unless you choose one of them. One.’
She closed her eyes and wished the world would swirl open in a vortex and suck her in. She wanted to choose by inaction, say nothing, but she could not do that. The thing at the end of the bed was just a machine and it would carry out its threat. Her thoughts were blocked and she could not process properly.
‘Two.’
Time changed. Rather than seeing a nebulous idea of the future, her whole being became detached from the line on which she had travelled her whole life and she could only comprehend the idea of the present. Her mother was going to die in the present. The other woman was still and said nothing.
‘Th—’
Miriam couldn’t breathe.
‘The other woman.’
The air came out. Her mouth, her tongue, her lips had formed around it, squeezing and moulding the air into those three words.
The woman sitting next to her gagged for air. She put her hand to the hole in the centre of her chest to hold the blood in. Her mouth spasmed and spluttered. The sound of the shot rang out in Miriam’s head followed immediately by a mushrooming, stridulous tinnitus. The other woman, the one she did not know, beat out the final machinations of her heart and then her body went flat and she was dead.
Crowder stood over them, emotionless.
‘Now. Choose again. Your mother or your daughter.’
The young mother of the two children was terrified. David could see it in the quick, jerky movements her head made whenever there was a noise. Her little boy clung tightly to her chest and the girl kept close behind her. David went behind t
hem with his gun poised to fire if he saw any danger.
They came to the stone pillars of the car park and the sound of human chattering came into the air.
The heavy silver mist looked as though it might be dissipating. He could see further now than before. They ran into the car park and passed the stone utility block.
A large group of people were near the entrance to the beach. They were trying to get out. A narrow bottleneck had formed. David scanned the area for the marauders but there were none. He checked that the woman and her two children were OK to go and approached the crowd.
They clutched possessions to their chests, dragged bags behind them, told their children to keep close.
‘Hey,’ he called out. He had spotted a guard standing in the grass-covered dunes away to the left, above the bottleneck. David pushed through the crowd to get to him. ‘Where are we going?’
The guard waved him on. ‘Anywhere. Just get away.’
‘But the beach just leads to the house – where they are,’ he shouted above the noise of the people.
‘Stay here then.’
David looked around him. This was insane. Streams of people were flowing into the car park now. It was every man for himself.
As quick as he could he fought his way back through the herd of bodies and found the family he was protecting. He tugged at the mother’s arm. Her face was ashen. Her mouth was a small, circular, black hole and her eyes looked at him as if pleading for a way out of this hell; not just their immediate predicament, but a way out of this new, cold, dangerous world that nobody understood – a return to the old ways.
‘Are you OK?’
He couldn’t even tell if she was hearing him. They pushed forwards in the crowd towards the bottleneck. David saw one of the mother’s hands reach down and take hold of the daughter’s collar. The crowd was swelling behind them. It was becoming a crush. David looked as far as he could over the heads of the people in front. There was still a way to go yet.
