by David Jester
Ian stopped in the middle of the entrance, between the metal railings, ready to block the screaming attackers. He turned to look over his shoulder and shouted through the noise, his voice thick with emotion and smoke. “Get them out!” he ordered. “Quickly.”
As soon as he turned back to his attackers they were upon him. The first one ran with his arm behind his back, ready to throw a punch. When he was in touching distance he launched the attack but Ian saw it coming. He stepped to the side and drove the handle of the axe into the side of his head. The attacker lost his balance and collapsed, hitting the railing on his way down. The resulting crack echoed throughout the room and the attacker slumped, unconscious, his body and head at unnatural angles.
Ian turned to the others who had both paused and were standing in front of him like dogs, grimacing and growling, ready to pounce.
“Who’s next?” Ian asked, feeling like the hero.
Darren was baffled as he stared at his stepfather, wondering what had happened to the abusive dick that had stayed in his house for the last few months. He was still wondering when Malcolm began ushering the others outside, one at a time. He started with his own mother who was more than happy to go first. He helped her up and out, practically pushing her through the gap. She fell on the other side, ran a few paces away, and then looked back, waiting for the others to follow.
“I can’t leave him!” Darren’s mother pleaded, staring at her lover.
“You need to,” Malcolm said.
She shook her head and seemed caught in a dilemma. She looked at Ian. The other two attackers had swarmed him now. He swiped the axe in front of one of them, threatening to hack off his leg, but he moved away just in time and then took advantage of the fact that Ian was off balance. He charged at him and drove a makeshift wooden bat across his face. Ian stumbled back and swung madly with the axe, but the attacker moved away again.
“Come on!” Malcolm yelled, watching the action and wondering how much fight Ian had left.
Darren reached out and grabbed his mother roughly by the shoulders. She stared blankly into his eyes, her mind was so used to the intoxicating comfort of chemicals that it didn’t know how to react when it had been without them for hours. “You need to go,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Ian will be fine.”
He wanted to lose his patience with her, he felt like screaming at her. She was putting his life at risk, putting Malcolm’s life at risk, and she didn’t seem to care. He was as frustrated with her as he had always been, but he kept his patience. “Please,” he added, hoping to appeal to whatever motherly instinct remained in her. “Please, Mum.”
She looked him, and then at Ian one last time and then turned and crawled through the hole. Malcolm helped her through, it was a struggle, he could feel her trembling, feel her whole body shaking; she was sweaty and sticky, but she eventually made it through.
“You next,” Malcolm said to Darren.
Ian was struggling now. He was still holding onto the axe, but the cumbersome weapon wasn’t doing him any favors. One of the attackers had backed off and was toying with him, swinging madly and using his bat to try and knock the axe out of Ian’s hand. The other was approaching with a knife, looking for a way in while avoiding swings from the axe.
“You first,” Darren said.
“But—”
“Please,” Darren cut in.
Malcolm stared at his friend for a moment. He heard his mother screaming to them through the wall behind him, heard Darren’s mother crying. He looked to Ian who was still standing tall, holding onto the axe, despite the desperate attempts by his attackers to bring him down.
He nodded softly to Darren and then climbed through the gap. He turned around on the other side and waited to help his friend through.
“Come on!” he yelled.
Darren was staring at Ian and Malcolm could sense his dilemma as he watched. Ian had been nothing to him, worse than nothing, but now he had helped him, he had saved his mother’s life and was about to save his. Darren knew that he couldn’t just watch him die; he knew that he couldn’t leave him to the mercy of his two attackers.
The heat was unbearable; the fire was at its peak and the building was on its last legs. The hallway through which they had all come, including the men that attacked the Ian, was engulfed; there was no escape through there and it was a matter of time before the fire took over the entire building.
Darren moved forward, ready to help. He stopped when Ian turned around, the two men still clinging on. He saw the look on Ian’s face and was surprised to see that he didn’t look afraid. He was struggling, and it showed, but he looked confident and strong.
“Go!” He yelled to Darren. “I’ve got this.”
“But—”
“Go!” he shouted. He managed to throw one of them off him and squirm out of the range of the other. Darren watched for a moment. He expressed his gratitude with a sincere smile and then turned and vaulted through the hole, with Malcolm dragging him through.
They both ran to join their parents, a dozen feet or more from the building. They all watched from there, riveted by the flames. They couldn’t see what was happening through the gap, but they all stared at that small hole, hoping that at any moment Ian would step through and join them.
They watched in silence for several minutes. They watched as the rubble fell, as the windows broke and shattered; they watched as the building, once glorious and intimidating, became a fiery shell of its former self. A spiral of thick black smoke was being pumped into the air, the crackling and crashing of the fire and the damage that it caused erupted into the bright afternoon.
The four of them watched and waited, until eventually the hole became part of the fire, as did the rest of the building. They never saw Ian leave.
Darren consoled his mother, wrapping his arm around her feeble frame as his stepfather had once done. He smiled, nodded in respect towards the burning building, knowing that Ian’s last act in life was probably his most rewarding.
Epilogue
Malcolm looked down at his hands and sighed. It was a tired, worried sigh. He shifted his backside, trying to find a comfortable position—one that didn’t dig into his buttocks or send shooting pains up his spine—but it was impossible, such a position didn’t seem to exist here. The floor beneath him was cold, hard, and dusty. It had been trod by many solemn feet, sat on by many lonely backsides.
In the silence, listening to his own breath and that of his current cellmate, he thought about Eddie and Darren. It had been a year since he had last seen the former and not a day went by when he didn’t think about him, when he didn’t think what went wrong and what he could have done to change things. Of course, he didn’t voice those thoughts, Eddie didn’t exist outside of his head.
A line of bars surrounded him, a mesh of metal that colored the cell walls in a latticework of shadows cast from the light in the room beyond. He sighed again as he looked at the bars. He thought about the route that his life could have taken. It’s funny how one small thing can have such a dramatic impact.
If he hadn’t gone to the hospital that night.
If he hadn’t listened to Eddie.
If he had stuck to stealing from houses.
The past was a series of questions, a list of regrets, buts, and what-ifs, but there was no turning back, no changing what had happened. He knew that all too well.
This building was his home now. He didn’t mind thinking about it that way. He quite liked it, he liked the solitude and he liked the company. His life had once revolved around crime, around getting drunk, smoking dope, and stealing, he did none of those things now, he did nothing that could give him a high—natural or not—but he preferred his life now to the way it was.
He looked over to his cellmate and smiled before carefully rising, he didn’t want to alert him, nor did he want to send his back into spasms. He stretched, yawned, and then grinned through the bars.
“He’s settled now,” he said. “Let me out
of the cell.”
Petti sighed and gave a joking shake of her head. “Mal, I’ve told you before to stop calling it a cell.”
“Why, you worried the dogs will feel self-conscious?”
Petti grinned and stood up. She opened the latch and the door swung open. Malcolm glanced back at the dog he had shared the better part of an hour with. He was still scared, still curled into a ball at the back of the cell, but he looked more comfortable than he had been and it looked like he was trying to sleep.
“You did a good thing,” Petti said. “You went beyond the call of duty,” she added with a wink.
The dog had lived a horrid life. Its first owner had been a drunk and a madman who took out his frustrations and hatred on him. He had probably been a bright and energetic puppy before then, but his owner dragged him down and he turned into a timid, shy dog. He was eventually rescued and found a loving foster family, but they tired of him; the husband and wife divorced, the family split under bad terms and they tried to use the dog as an emotional bargaining tool, before deciding that neither of them wanted him.
He had been admitted into the shelter that morning and Malcolm had been drawn to him instantly. He felt a kinship. He was alone and needy, desperate for human support. He cried when they left him in the kennel alone, he refused to eat and, despite looking like he was desperate for sleep, he refused to even close his eyes when he was on his own—as if he was afraid of what the darkness would bring.
“I like him,” Malcolm said, smiling as the dog closed his eyes and nestled his head between his front two paws. “I think I’ll adopt him.”
“That’s sweet.” Petti turned to the dog and spoke softly in case she woke him up, “You hear that Rex? Malcolm wants to keep you.”
“No,” Malcolm said sternly, “not Rex. This is a new start for him, he needs a new name.”
“Okay,” Petti said, straightening up and putting her hands on her hips. “What have you got in mind?”
Malcolm stared at the dog for a while as if deep in thought, but he had already thought of a name. “Eddie,” he said.
“Eddie?”
“Yeah. Like an old friend of mine. He turned out to be a bit of a dick, but we had some good times.” He smiled at the dog. “My friend had a chance at a good life and he blew it in a big way, but I have high hopes for this Eddie.”
“For Eddie the dog?” Petti said, looking slightly perplexed but retaining a cheeky smile as she stared at her colleague.
“Yeah.”
“Okay then.” She laughed softly, reached out and grabbed at his face. She wrapped her hand around his mouth, squeezed her fingers until his lips puckered like a fish, and then leaned in and gave him a kiss. “Eddie it is,” she said, pulling back. “Our new pet.”
Malcolm grinned and moved in for a deeper, longer kiss. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off Petti since they had been together. He had finally plucked up the courage to ask her out just a few weeks after the incident at the hospital. He had felt renewed and had a new lease on life. He was also desperate and didn’t have a place to go, he spent the first few weeks living in his house but eventually he was evicted. He had lost everything and felt he had nothing more to lose, then Petti agreed to go out on a date with him and the rest, including a full-time job at the shelter and moving into her house with her, was history.
“For fuck’s sake, get a room.”
The embracing couple pulled apart when they heard the door slam shut. They both turned towards the newcomer.
“We did get a room,” Petti announced, grinning, “but then we invited some dickhead to live with us and we haven’t had a moment’s peace since.”
Darren stopped in the middle of the floor; he frowned and looked at them both suspiciously. “What dickhead?” he asked. “I thought it was only us three living there . . . you’re not talking about Malcolm, are you? Because I resent that remark. He’s my friend and I won’t stand here while you talk about him like that.”
“Fuck off,” Petti said, striding forward to punch Darren playfully on the shoulder. She brushed past him, leaving him rubbing his shoulder as she entered the back room to a chorus of barking from the many kenneled dogs that waited to be fed.
“So,” Malcolm said, looking around with his hands in his pockets. “How’s the job hunt?”
Darren shrugged, “Nothing yet. I applied for a few, but I’m not holding my breath. You’d think that with my skills I’d have a crowd of employers lining up at my door.”
“I guess there isn’t much need for burglars these days.”
Darren shook his head. “I was never much good at that anyway. It’s a miracle we never got caught to be honest. It’s a good thing we got out when we did.”
“Agreed.”
The two locked stares for a moment, a wealth of questions and conversations passed between them but neither of them uttered a word. They didn’t talk about Eddie, had barely spoken of him since the incident at the hospital. They didn’t want their names linked to what had happened so they didn’t report it to the police and they let the story unfold by itself. Malcolm’s mother returned to her lover, abandoning Malcolm again, but this time at his request; Darren’s mother returned to her drugs and her drink, slipping back into an oblivion that she was never going to leave. With Ian dead, she didn’t have anyone to facilitate her addictions. Darren thought that she would be healthier without Ian. But that didn’t seem to be the case. Whether she had been traumatized by his passing or whether he had actually been reining in her reckless behavior he didn’t know, but she was worse than she had ever been.
There were a few other survivors: two patients and a staff member. The patients had managed to get out through a back door and were found wandering the fields covered in blood. They put up a fight with the fire brigade and the police, but they didn’t hurt anyone. The staff member had hidden in a shower stall in the changing rooms before clambering out of an unbarred window when the fire started. The survivors had achieved fame and infamy, the former had been arrested, charged, and moved to a different facility, the latter had spent three months giving interviews and was now rumored to be writing a book.
Malcolm and Darren had been questioned by the police, but other than their links to one of the victims, there was nothing to place them at the scene. The building had been demolished; the surveillance equipment and any fingerprints or DNA they had left behind was destroyed. They identified Eddie and Hildenberg from their dental records, they never identified Neil.
“So who’s this fella,” Darren said, nodding towards the sleeping dog. “I’ve never seen a ginger dog before.”
“Then you haven’t seen many dogs. It’s a red setter. Quite common.”
Darren nodded, a glint in his eye as he admired the sleeping canine. “He’s cute.”
“He’s ours now.”
“What’s his name?”
Malcolm paused, waiting for Darren to make eye contact. “Eddie.”
He saw the memories flash across his friend’s face, but they weren’t fearful or angry. Malcolm hadn’t had nightmares about Eddie and he rarely thought about the horrific things he did on that night, when he thought about him he thought about the Eddie that had been his friend for so long, he thought about the kid that he had grown up with and, as he looked at Darren, he knew that Darren remembered him the same way.
“That’s a nice name,” Darren said after a long pause, a silence interrupted only by the sporadic barking of dogs in the back room and the cheerful cooing of Petti as she fed them one by one. “I like that name.”
“Me too,” Malcolm agreed after a while.
Darren stared at the dog again; he paused, protracting another silence, before adding, “Better than fucking Marshall.”
Acknowledgments
To my agent, Peter Beren and my editors, Emily Shields and Nicole Frail. To Yiota, my partner, for her unending support; to my dad for being one of my biggest fans and my strongest advo-cates; to my brother, Gary, who will probably neve
r see this, but definitely deserves to be part of it.
To Josh, for being a tutor, mentor, and friend; to Anthony, Jon, Debbie, and Ben for help-ing to make sure these words don’t go unread; to Mike for continuing to read and support my work in all its many guises; to Shana, Alfonso, and Megan for their dedication and hard work; to Steve for reducing my tax-time headaches.
A list of acknowledgements wouldn’t be complete with mentioning Alan, Carl, Gary, and everyone else who has helped and supported me over the years.
