Armwrestling the Dead

by Andrew McEwan

and the visiting extraterrestrials. Straining Jakob, like many others, had taken for granted the media’s apparent foreknowledge, its government sources reliably informed as to the time and place of the landing. The sight of the lamely drifting pod, however, fitted no news-hyped scenario he was aware of. The whole episode teetered dangerous on the brink of anticlimax. But then, as if sensing the mood, a wind strengthened from the east, catching the alien vessel and dragging it wide of the spacious concrete. Several seconds elapsed, the pod drifted lower, and suddenly pandemonium gripped the crowd, who, robbed of any spectacle, turned as one and ran in the direction of Thistle Park.

  Ellen was laughing, uproarious as she sprinted, holding Jakob’s hand, holding her hat, the two immersed in a speeding conglomerate, pushed and pushing as the ground disappeared on every side, wrapped in fierce layers of commotion. The crowd’s mood turned euphoric, frantically bubbling, men and women, children the first to cry out, their wonder swamped by fear, the less fit slipping on the damp turf as the mass reached the outskirts of the park, dropped possessions and fallen citizenry disturbing the previously even flow of bodies. Shouts went unheard and injuries were garnered while the press mounted the hillside and washed like a storm-fattened river into the gentle valley beyond. Here the pod had descended, and here were no guns or soldiers to countermand. Here the madness climaxed, trampling dirty faces and snarling like dogs, an intoxicated whirlpool of people shrieking and biting as each sought a token, a crumb from the feast of broken, superior technology.

  Not Ellen. She dragged him wide, riding the sucking gravity of the throng and continuing up the valley’s far side. Jakob’s head turned over his shoulder, but his legs carried him along with the girl, obedient to that smile she wore, a smile which admitted no equal, her goal a bench and two dishevelled men sitting on it.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted, beaming widely, Jakob exhausted beside her, the pair’s otherworldly pallor yet to impinge. ‘Courtney sent me to meet you. Welcome to Oriel!’

  iii

  Jakob sat numb and helpless in the front of the car, the two men in the rear, one either side of diminutive Ellen. Newly introduced and bearing more than a familial likeness, her sister Jenny was driving, wearing sunglasses and a smile. The aliens were distant and quiet, the larger fidgeting with a lighter, his companion sucking a boiled sweet Jakob had offered having discovered a paper bag of them glued in his pocket.

  They stopped at a signal. The traffic arranged itself in lanes between pavements and buildings, the latter crusted and awned, the former choked with pedestrians, caged trees, dachshunds and meters. Ivan rubbed his knuckles against the dark glass. Harry peered over Jakob’s shoulder.

  Jenny said, ‘Pleased you could make it, fellas.’

  Both remained silent. In the park, on the bench, they had evinced surprise at the mention of Courtney.

  Did they know him? Did he? Jakob imagined so, the name bringing to mind the old man in the bookshop...which made him feel differently about Ellen. Sure she listened, he told himself, sulking. She was sent to listen. Sent by Courtney.

  He felt an empathy with the two men. They were hiding their confusion, hoping to learn, awaiting elucidation.

  The signal changed and they turned left onto Freedman Avenue.

  At least he’d been able to empty his bladder.

  Winter sun blinked on and off as they drove, winding slowly through Moss City, one avenue after another: Kaleyard, East, Longevity. Shop fronts and arcadia writhed, stores illuminated and shady. Somewhere a bus honked. They appeared to circle, as if negotiating a maze, gradually making their way toward the centre. Jakob caught Jenny’s concerned expression, her eyelash flutter as she glanced in the rearview. He quashed the urge to turn around, guessing they were followed. A pity, as he wanted to meet the old man again. Maybe it was still possible. maybe he ought to be back at work, doing his rounds at the factory, chatting, tasting and inquiring after families he knew to be healthy. Was there any illness in Moss? Had to be. There were clinics, two hospitals; too much cover for accidents. Strange how things only became real when you thought of them.

  Jenny accelerated and manoeuvred down a side street. The car behind skidded, wagged its tail in open pursuit. She shook her head. ‘I hadn’t expected this. Ellen, I’m letting you and your boyfriend out, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ replied her sibling. ‘Jakob, get ready.’

  ‘What?’ He was scared, the vehicle weaving through alleys, bouncing uncomfortably before emerging onto a main thoroughfare. ‘What is this? I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you.’

  One of the men laughed. Ivan?

  Yes, Ivan. The other sweated, Ellen climbing over him to reach the door.

  ‘Make a left,’ she instructed. More alleyways. ‘Jake?’ She shoved him. He opened his door as the car swept to a halt. Alighting, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into a dim hotel lobby. ‘Fuck, Jake, this is serious. Don’t you realize what’s at stake?’

  ‘You,’ he said bitterly, ‘have lied to me all along.’

  Silence engulfed them.

  She took his hands in her own.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  The deserted hotel’s musty decor was spotted with fuzzy lights, spots of incandescence that appeared without source. Luminous moths...

  Elsewhere, ‘Don’t shoot,’ Harry mumbled.

  ‘Get out of the car,’ ordered a masked individual, its sexless body wrapped, faceless, meaning what it said.

  Ivan lay bloodied, Jenny gaping.

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  Harry shuffled from the back seat, splinters of glass in his clothing.

  ‘This way,’ the voice told him, indicating a second vehicle.

  He paused to gaze at the woman with her innards punctured, her sunglasses broken. Ivan had not remained passive, cringing like Harry, but taken on one of their aggressors, wrestling him to the ground before being shot. Despite himself, Harry experienced the loss. Ivan had fast become part of his tableau. Now he was alone, a prisoner, Courtney and the truth behind Oriel farther removed, complicated in a fashion he would not have believed.

  A gun nosed his ribs once in the other car. He tried his best to remain calm. The gun shunted him again, hard and deliberate, as if trying to get his attention. Its snout twisted as they pulled away. Harry’s mouth fell open. He turned to stare but the barrel was jammed with force. He got the message: Ivan. Ivan! Harry wanted to be sick. He covered his face, terrified of giving anything away, the man beside him the same he had first encountered on Rumpelstiltskin, then at the hub, his features those of a distended junkie. And here he was transmogrified once more, in a city of countless avenues, a city of mirrors and living flesh.

  Harry closed his eyes and only opened them again when they stopped.

  Dark, dank, subterranean, sound dampened, footfalls weak as he was led toward an elevator. No, they steered him in the direction of the stairs instead. A precaution? This place less than secure? Risks a wise person might take, to be under someone’s unsuspecting nose rather than ensconced in a hideaway the enemy might happen upon by mistake.

  But what did he know of espionage?

  Enough. It fascinated the dredger inasmuch as it stirred his journalistic credence, provoking a thirst.

  He walked. No blindfold.

  The rendezvous was a sparsely furnished apartment. Sat in a folding chair was a woman who appeared switched off, housed elsewhere, this a medium, a flesh-set he was seated facing, awaiting some prompt.

  Two of the four masks left the room. Harry failed to distinguish Ivan.

  The woman flinched.

  He trembled, injected with a sudden craving for nicotine or a passable substitute.

  ‘Orlando,’ said the woman; ‘a cigarette.’

  Grateful, Harry sucked.

  ‘The suitcase,’ she inquired. ‘Where is it?’

  Harry nearly laughed. The suitcase? Shit, he’d completely forgotten about the surviving half of his luggag
e. It remained in orbit on the junk.

  They were interested in that?

  Why not? One suitcase had been left in a lost property office overseen by God.

  He did laugh; was struck in the back of the neck, a blow that sent him reeling. Blackness, then the stench of burnt carpet, his cigarette extinguished in it and buckled Harry on his knees trying to raise his head.

  ‘Orlando.’

  Kicked in the gut. At least the other mask twitched. Ivan, surely. But there was something to learn here first. Harry realized that.

  He breathed the best he could. ‘I don’t have it,’ he said, eyes watering, her hard face unsympathetic. ‘I don’t have it with me,’ he expounded, stating the obvious, buying moments.

  She leaned forward. ‘I think you think you can make a deal. Correct?’

  The fucking suitcase. He wished he had trashed everything, himself included.

  ‘Orlando.’

  He gritted his teeth, but what arrived was a fresh smoke. A small difference in inflexion. His lip bled.

  ‘The suitcase,’ he said, going for broke. ‘What’s in it?’

  Her eyes were dry and lustreless, her teeth imperfect. An overbite. Her skull when it exploded splashed the room with an assortment of colours.

  The mask called Orlando collapsed to the floor.

  There was a cruel pause. Two masks, undecided, were wedged in the jamb, the destruction’s source unclear.

  Ivan shrugged and blew them away with the wall.

  ‘Perhaps I should have waited,’ he said later, apologetic in