Talulla Rising

by Glen Duncan

  Murdoch (Walker’s jibe explained) looked at him for a moment, smiling. Said nothing. Then to one of his team: ‘Mr Tunner, let’s get these people secured and on their way.’

  Several Hunters equipped with hand- and leg-cuffs moved forward. Hudd leaped at one of them and was immediately shot in the hip. Carney dropped his redundant pistol and allowed himself to be secured. Three hunters approached Konstantinov. ‘Easy way or hard way, Mike?’ one of them said. ‘Up to you.’ Then before Konstantinov answered shot him in the leg with a tranquiliser dart. Konstantinov slumped to his knees, dropped his pistol. His dark face was slack. With an enormous mesmerising effort he got back onto one knee, got his right foot underneath him, pawed the air once, looking for a hold... then keeled over.

  Murdoch returned to Hoyle. I could feel in Walker a kind of exhaustion because he knew how far away from certain things Murdoch had travelled, how pointless it was to hope for compassion.

  I wanted Hoyle to be unconscious, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t move, but he was aware of the man standing over him. Feelings I wasn’t entitled to flickered.

  Murdoch was at a familiar dead-end of irritation. It was always irritating, eventually, that you could find out exactly how much violence a body could absorb before it died. Every body was initially fascinating and unique. Every body was initially the body of a person. As in pornography. But like pornography’s rituals violence wore through the uniqueness so quickly. Soon the person was gone and all that was left was dumb finite flesh. And the dumbness and finiteness was a dead-end, because your will was infinite and impossible to satisfy. Your will needed the person to last for ever.

  (Whereas for the werewolf... What? The person did last for ever? Certainly my victims never stopped being people. Certainly they lived on in me. Certainly the person was never separable from the flesh. Here was a new room in the house of many absurd mansions: I read the books, Murdoch burned them. I was erotica, he was porn. Jake would have been proud of me.)

  Murdoch lifted his boot and stomped as hard as he could on Hoyle’s head. Hoyle’s eyelids fluttered. Blood ran from his mouth, exactly as the juice from a can of cherries I once pointlessly punctured with Lauren’s penknife. Murdoch swung his foot back and kicked Hoyle in the face. Hoyle’s head snapped back and a tooth flew out. Murdoch stood for a moment with his thin mouth closed, breathing through his nose. Then he unslung the machine gun and took hold of it by the barrel. He positioned himself carefully, swung the weapon up over his shoulder, then brought it down with all his force on Hoyle’s skull.

  He did this repeatedly for perhaps a minute, fifteen or twenty blows, then stopped.

  Hoyle was dead, of course. His left eye was on the floor and his brain was half out. A halo of dark blood had formed around what was left of his head. There was a Monty Python drawing it reminded me of, one of Terry Gilliam’s surreally compelling animations. Murdoch poked at the eyeball with his toe. There was a mass of silent energy in the men around us. Murdoch looked at Walker, emptily, for a few moments. It seemed one of them must say something, but neither did. I had a profound sense of all the time and energy I’d spent telling myself not to believe but believing anyway that this was going to bring me to my son. All that time and energy and belief poured into nothing, like trust into a traitor, like billions into a scam.

  Then I felt a stinging sensation in my shoulder, and within five seconds everything went black.

  35

  I woke to the stink of vampires.

  And disinfectant. Joined immediately by the memory of Murdoch’s bored face and Hoyle’s eye out on its optic nerve and Zoë’s hot fragile sleep-scented head when I kissed her goodbye.

  I rolled over and vomited.

  I was alone on the floor of a prison cell. Ten by twelve, bare concrete on all sides except one, which was a row of four-inch-diameter steel bars even wulf in all her glory wouldn’t be able to budge. A yellow bucket. A large plastic bottle of water. The hum of air-conditioning and the soundproofed feeling of being deep underground. A tired fluorescent buzzed, gave the light an irritating tremor.

  Assume Walker’s dead.

  The thought was there like a standing stone with me in the cell. I admitted it was there, but that was all. The thought was there and that was all. That was all I had to concede.

  For a while I could do nothing but lie curled on my side with my arms wrapped around myself, breathing, humbled. It was like my time on the floor of the safe-deposit cubicle at Coralton-Verne. Every time I told myself, Right, get up, stupid, I found I couldn’t. If it hadn’t been for the smell tormenting me I might have dropped back into sleep.

  Eventually, by degrees, I sat up. Dehydration banged in my head. Unsuckled milk stabbed my breasts. Blocked ducts, abscesses, cancer. Hardly mattered now. My neck was numb from where the tranquiliser had gone in. I crawled with what felt like audibly tearing muscles to the water bottle, found I just had the strength to unscrew the cap, then drank, all the while thinking, don’t drink a lot, you don’t know when you’ll get more, but too thirsty to take my own advice. When I lowered the bottle it was half empty.

  I got, via a series of wobbling false starts and failures, to my feet. Let the blood in my limbs loosen. My backpack was gone. I stepped up to the bars and looked out.

  There were six cells, three either side of a short corridor which was sealed by a bank vault door at each end. Card-swipe entry. A line of CCTV cameras along the corridor ceiling, one trained on each cell. My cell was the middle of the three. I couldn’t see if the ones on my left and right were occupied, but in the cell opposite me was a boy of maybe eleven or twelve, skeletally thin, lying in the foetal position on the floor with his arms wrapped around himself, staring at me. He had a skullish face, large green eyes and tangled white-blond hair. All he had on was a pair of dirty white Adidas sweatpants. His circulatory system showed through his skin. He looked like a thing of porcelain webbed with fractures.

  The stink was coming from him.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied. He was wet with what looked like pale pink sweat, jellyish in places.

  ‘Is it just me and you down here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Where are we?’

  He swallowed. Closed his eyes. Swallowing hurt. Existence hurt. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. An English accent I couldn’t place. Or an English accent interfered with by lots of places.

  ‘Where were you when they caught you?’

  ‘Scotland.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Twenty-one days.’

  ‘Are there other vampires here?’

  With bizarre fluttery speed he got up onto his elbows and retched, shuddering. A single pinkish strand of what looked like mucus hung from his bottom lip. He spat it out. There was a small puddle of the stuff next to him on the floor.

  ‘Is that me?’ I asked.

  He couldn’t answer. I realised he had his arms around himself to contain what looked like muscular spasms. Each time one came his capillary system darkened, then faded again when it passed. I thought: Twenty-one days. Jake said vampires needed to feed every three or four. They were starving him.

  ‘You... a werewolf?’

  ‘Fraid so.’

  ‘They told me you lot stank. I mean—’ Pain hit him again. He brought his knees tighter to his chest, clamped his jaws. Breathed through it. ‘That didn’t come out right.’

  ‘Yeah, well, if it’s any consolation, you stink too.’

  He didn’t smile, but his eyes said he would have if he’d had the strength. ‘You don’t have to... talk to me... like I’m ten,’ he said, shivering.

  ‘I didn’t realise I was.’

  ‘It’s the tone. I’m seventeen.’

  Now that he said it I realised I’d been pitching as if to a child. Old habits. For all I’d known he could’ve pre-dated Moses.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Stupid of me.’ It was an effort not to react to how bad he looked. An effort not to be so obv
iously thinking: you’re dying, kiddo.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Thirty-four,’ I told him. ‘I’m new. Listen – oh, fuck.’ I had to vomit again. This time I made it to the bucket. The disinfectant’s ammonia was a brutal palliative against his stench. I kept my head over it. ‘I guess they think this is hilarious,’ I said, once I’d recovered and crawled back to the bars. I’d brought the bucket with me, held under my nose.

  He nodded, but I could see the effort talking was costing him.

  ‘Do you know how long I’ve been here?’ I asked. ‘Was there anyone with me when they brought me in?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was asleep. Woke up... a couple of hours ago. You were here.’

  Assume Walker’s dead.

  More was required now. Just admitting the thought wasn’t enough. So here was the feeling, as if something vital had been surgically removed from me while I was unconscious. Assume he’s dead. The different quality of reality without him in it. Fresh loneliness, fresh failure, the world like a big brashly-lit room, a huge empty space for me to feel sorry for myself in. Serves you right. Assume he’s dead. Assume Konstantinov’s dead. Assume you’re alone in here and you’ll never get out and your daughter will never know you and your son will die. Make all the worst assumptions.

  ‘How’d they... catch you?’ he asked.

  ‘We got set-up,’ I said. ‘It’s a long story. Look, I’ll tell you the whole thing but can you just tell me what you know about this place first? What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Caleb.’

  ‘I’m Talulla.’

  He made a slight movement with his head. Official hello. The pink sweat had darkened.

  ‘Are you up to talking?’ I asked.

  He swallowed. As if forcing down powdered glass. ‘Tired,’ he said.

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry.’ I was sorry. Species revulsion was no joke – wulf wanted as much distance between us as possible – but the shared predicament did a lot of the sympathetic work. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Just rest a while. We’ll talk when you feel better.’

  ‘I won’t feel... better. I’ll feel worse. They’ll... be coming soon. I’m going... to die in this fucking place.’

  Another spasm took him. The veins blackened. It was an ugly thing to watch but solidarity demanded it.

  ‘They’ll regret it,’ he said, when he’d got his breath. ‘When Remshi... comes... they’ll wish they’d never... been born.’

  36

  Before I could pounce on that the vault door at the right-hand end of the corridor emitted a string of electronic blips, followed by a hydraulic sigh and the sound of a heavy lock opening. I looked at Caleb. His eyes were closed. Whatever it was he was familiar with it. Whatever it was it was bad.

  The door swung open and Murdoch entered, followed by a younger, smaller, musclebound Hunter with too much energy dressed in black combat pants and vest, carrying a set of restraints and what looked like a cattle prod. He had a skinhead and sticking-out ears, round blue eyes and mouth like a chimp’s. The overall effect was of a bouncy, steroidal little ape. A crowd’s murmur followed them in. Murdoch came directly to my cell while the chimp-thug fitted what looked like a radiator key (hung on a chain around his neck) into one of six sockets on a control panel next to the door. One turn anti-clockwise and a red indicator light turned green. Two seconds later the middle six bars of my cell slid upwards, precision engineered, friction-free, and disappeared into the roof.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Murdoch asked.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re at a detention facility in the Royal County of Berkshire, England. It’s Tuesday the sixth of November and the time is...’ He looked at his watch... ‘Seven-thirty-six in the evening. You were brought here by air under sedation, along with Walker and his team, who are alive, you’ll be glad to hear, housed variously and elsewhere in the building. Now it might seem unwarranted but I’m... ’ The chimp-thug entered my cell with the set of wrists-to-ankles restraints... ‘going to have to ask that you wear these for now, so we can give our full attention to the business in hand.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Please,’ he said, reading me. ‘No antics. You won’t be able to get my gun, and even if you did there are twenty men in the room next door. Not to mention Mr Tunner here. Absolutely no harm will come to you if you cooperate. It’s just a bit of peace of mind for your uncle John.’

  ‘You don’t need to cuff me,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to—’

  He punched me, hard, in the stomach, faster than I would have thought possible. The universe sucked all the air out of my lungs and I dropped, first to my knees then onto all-fours. The pain absorbed me, immediately and completely. There was nowhere to go to get away from it because it was everything. I could see how far away being able to take a breath was, like a light on a distant shore. I’d be dead long before I reached it.

  ‘The way it works with me,’ Murdoch said, ‘is that I ask you to come into line with my will voluntarily. If you don’t come voluntarily you’re brought by force. I should have told you I only ask once. That was an oversight. I apologise.’

  ‘Getting sloppy, Nuncle,’ Tunner said, as he began fitting the now-redundant restraints.

  ‘She’s going to vomit,’ Murdoch said.

  Tunner grabbed the bucket and got it under me just in time. I threw up in three abrasive installments then collapsed onto my side. As far as I could tell I still hadn’t breathed in. There was an anvil of blood where my lungs used to be.

  ‘Bring her in when she’s herself again. Here, give me that.’

  Murdoch, now armed with the cattle prod, returned to the control panel, inserted his own key, turned, got the green light, then moved to Caleb’s cell, where the bars were already rising.

  I couldn’t see Caleb, but I would have heard if anything passed between him and Murdoch. It didn’t. Murdoch just stood there for a few moments with the cattle prod in his hand. Caleb, evidently, was too weak to move.

  Murdoch went back to the vault door. ‘Sobel,’ he called. ‘Give me a bag.’

  Someone handed Murdoch a clear plastic pouch about the size of a man’s wallet.

  It was full of blood.

  37

  The room next door was big and windowless, with the echoey feel of a school gymnasium. It contained nothing but a very large cage (maybe twenty by twenty feet with walls twice an average person’s height) that had clearly been constructed from other cages, doctored and bolted together. Razor wire had been bound along two of its opposite sides. Two dozen or so Hunters stood around it, most relaxed (one or two smoking, another drinking a Coke) but a few doing warm-up stretches. Two doors, one closed, the other showing a brightly-lit corridor. A whiteboard on the wall displayed a list of names and numbers in different colours.

  Caleb was in the cage. The blood had given him enough strength to drag himself there, goaded by Murdoch with the prod. Now he’d collapsed again. Tunner, having fastened my restraints to a bar on the vault door, had removed his black vest and was limbering up by the cage, deltoids twitching, abdominals like a pack of boules.

  Murdoch raised his hand. The men’s murmur died. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Mr Tunner. Time selection, please.’

  Tunner rolled his head a couple of times as if to ease neck-tension, pursed his lips, took one deep breath, then said: ‘Two minutes forty-five seconds, Nuncle, if it please.’

  Murdoch took out a stopwatch from his pocket. ‘Two minutes forty-five on the clock for Mr Tunner. Number of bags, Mr Tunner?’

  ‘Two more bags, Nuncle.’

  ‘Two more bags, Mr Sobel. Time starts on completion of second bag. Ink-up and get yourself in there.’

  One of the Hunters handed Tunner a police nightstick and a fat red felt marker pen. Sobel, meanwhile, reached into a bag and produced two more plastic pouches of blood. Tunner entered the cage and the door was locked behind him. Sobel tossed the blood-bags to where Caleb lay. Caleb s
tared at them. I wondered how many times he’d been through this battle with his thirst. However many, he’d lost every time. Would lose every time. It was in his face. The only way out was not to drink. But the vampire always drank. Always.

  I watched everything that followed. Partly because again the forced solidarity of imprisonment demanded it, but mostly because I was no longer (in fact, never had been) the sort for whom not watching was an option. Whatever horror it was, if it was put in front of me, I’d look. (My mother was the same. I’d caught the tail-end of an argument she’d had with my dad. You haven’t got a heart, he’d barked. You’ve got a fucking eyeball. With no eyelids, just permanently open, obliged to see everything. Yes, my mother had replied, with terrible calm sweetness, like God.) What followed was that Caleb bit into the bags and drank the blood. The livid circulatory map faded a little. He got first to his knees then to his feet, though it was obvious he was still weak, and, now that he’d had a taste, desperate for more blood.

  Tunner approached, brazenly relaxed.

  ‘He’s not up for it,’ one of the spectators called.

  ‘He bloody is,’ another replied. ‘Come on, son, bar’s open.’

  ‘Let’s go, Casper.’

  ‘Teach him a lesson, son.’

  But Caleb stood still. I could see in his jaw what it cost him, his rider simultaneously digging in the spurs and hauling on the reins.

  ‘Look at the will on my boy. Look at the will.’

  ‘He’s going... He’s going... ’

  ‘He’s not. He’s a fucking Zen master. You keep it down, my son. Good lad.’

  ‘Come on, Tunner, for fuck’s sake.’

  Tunner was almost within reach. Caleb stared at the floor. His bare white feet were beautiful, fine-boned things.

  ‘Goo-orn, son, you show him.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to look soft in front of his new girlfriend.’

  Which remark had two effects. One was that Caleb’s head snapped around to see who’d said it. The other was that it inspired Tunner. He leaped forward and yanked down the elastic waistband of Caleb’s sweats. Suddenly the boy’s small genitals were exposed – to a cheer from the crowd. It was only a second before he’d snatched his pants back up – but that was the end of his resistance. He flew at Tunner, mouth open, fangs exposed – with a speed Tunner manifestly hadn’t expected, since his evasive leap took him straight into the razor wire. Caleb spun back on him and suddenly the room’s atmosphere was tight. Tunner, now bleeding in several places, got away from the boy again, but only just. The crowd focused. The human heat and smell thickened.