It took five sharp raps at the door before he heard footsteps on the other side, could see the shape of someone cautiously approaching. Another three to make them realise they were in a hurry. The door inched open, revealing the face of a young girl. Her eyes were wide, and her skin was almost translucent in the moonlight.
“What do you—?”
Lucas kicked the door, forcing the girl backwards. He uttered a brief, “Sorry,” as he took his best guess around the house, finding a long leather sofa padded with cushions. He eased the boy down and kneeled beside him, performed a quick check for breath again, struggled to find any, and pulled off his jacket. He heard the front door shut and the sounds of scratching and feral calls on the other side, helpless to reach their target.
Maddie stood in the living room doorway, simply watching. The girl appeared a second later and paused next to her, watching the scene with frightful eyes, her nose now decorated with a smatter of red. She saw the boy on the sofa and clapped her hands to her mouth.
“Oh my! Is he… Is he…?”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Lucas was far too in the zone to even acknowledge that she was there. He shone a small torch in both of the kid’s eyes, finding no dilation of the pupils. He rifled through his coat, digging deep into his pockets but couldn’t find the thing that he was looking for. He looked up at Maddie. “Where is it? Where did I put it?”
“Put what?” Maddie replied.
Lucas patted his pockets again. A realisation dawned on him. He barked at the girl. “The car outside! Go. Glove compartment. Needle kit.” The girl stood there, staring blankly at him as though he had spoken a foreign language. “Now!”
The girl went to move before Maddie rolled her eyes, grabbed her by the shoulders to keep her in place, then pulled the leather pouch from her own pocket.
Lucas paused as Maddie presented the pouch.
Maddie shrugged.
Lucas placed the pouch next to Kurt and ripped at the boy’s t-shirt until an uneven circle of flesh was exposed around the centre of his chest. His heart raced. When was the last time he had done this to anyone? Punched the needle into the solar plexus like a dartboard and pushed the plunger? A year? A lifetime? It all blurred into one as Lucas hovered with his hands over the spot he needed to enter. Maddie sensed the hesitation and ran around the coffee table to join him, spotting some blankets in the corner of the room to throw over Kurt’s legs. Though it was dark with the lights off, there was enough to see by, and Lucas’ eyes adjusted pretty quickly to the gloom.
“Ready?” he said, more for himself than Maddie who returned a slow nod. “You might want to look away,” he gestured to the girl, “this ain’t gonna be a pretty sight.”
The girl didn’t flinch. Just stared at them both. The next moment Lucas struck the needle down. The point pricked the flesh and drove deep into the boy’s chest cavity until its entire length disappeared. He punched the plunger down, releasing the blue liquid into the boy’s system in one intense shot.
The effect was instantaneous. From the minute that the blue liquid emptied, Kurt’s eyes snapped open. He rose as if from a deep mission underwater, gasping for breath, flailing around. He sat up, the needle still poking out of his chest as it ripped out of Lucas’ hands “Lazarus!?… Laz…” He spun on the seat to see Lucas, then spun some more, his face riddled with confusion. He saw the girl, tried to stand and walk towards her. “Amy!?”
Lucas caught Kurt once more as his legs buckled, and he came crashing to the ground.
38
Anita took a slow, controlled breath outwards. She clenched the pack of cigarettes tightly in her hand. How did he always manage to do this? To wind her up to the point of no return? “Say it one more time for me. Tell us what you saw.”
Sammi shifted against the counter. Stanley sat across the room, head in his hands. Anita felt his pain. “What more do you want me to say? There might’ve been people, there might not have. I took a couple doors, I left through a couple more. The whole thing was a fucking rush! Ani, you never told me how good it feels to die.” Miguel beamed at them all, clearly finding it difficult to believe they couldn’t see things through his lens.
Anita wiped her hand across her face. Miguel had seemed calm for the first thirty seconds after they had injected the blue reviver. But in the last few minutes the formula worked around his body and had made him impossible to tolerate. It was like he was on a sugar buzz and a crack high all at once. She should’ve expected it really. They had all been like it before.
“When you first came round, you mentioned a boy?” Sammi said.
“There might’ve been a boy. There might’ve been a thousand. Come on, girls, let me out of the chair, please. I promise I’ll be good. All I really remember is it was dark – oh, you won’t believe how dark it was—”
“—I’m sure I have some idea,” Sammi muttered.
“—And then a door just appeared. Can you believe it? Appeared?! Ha! What is this place? Why doesn’t the whole world know about this?”
They will soon enough.
Miguel playfully struggled against the cuffs of the chair. Stanley clapped his hands against his thighs and stood up. “You’re getting nowhere here. Want me to calm him?”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, tubs?”
“Now, now, gents,” Ani said, stepping between the pair. She turned to Miguel, came right up to his face. She withdrew a cigarette from the carton, greedily placing it between her lips, and lit the end. She leant her head back, savouring the taste, and blew the smoke upwards. “My first cigarette in three years. Happy?”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Anita slapped Miguel. Hard. He recoiled in shock.
“What was that for?!”
“Tell us again what you saw.”
This time Miguel looked a little afraid of the woman blowing smoke in his face. He closed his eyes, visibly shaking, and reeled off his experience with all the concentration of a fifth-grader in a spelling bee.
When he recalled it all – as much as he could clearly remember – he let his head relax.
“Lazarus?” Anita ran to a drawer near Sammi, pulled out her personal copy of the Lord’s Holy Bible and flicked through the pages. She hovered a finger over a couple lines, then showed the page to Sammi.
Sammi read, “‘The Raising of Lazarus’. John 11: 1–44. ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’”
Ani turned to Miguel. “You’re definitely sure the boy said ‘Lazarus’?”
“Positive. Words came spewing out my mouth without me thinking. Mama would be proud she took me to church.”
“What could this mean?” Anita said to Sammi. “That there’s someone in the Deadspace talking to the in-betweens?”
“Impossible. No one can exist in the Deadspace. You’re either in or out. Or maybe inbetween in our case, but only for limited times before you’re lost completely and it claims you. You know this, Ani. But that’s the nature of the Deadspace, it’s a one-stop shop to the other side. The waiting platform for the Hogwarts Express, only, there’s no coming back once you’re gone.”
Ani considered this a moment. “A decade ago we found a gateway into the afterlife. I think anything’s impossible right now.”
Miguel tried to raise a hand, then, when he realised he couldn’t, he said, “Ooo! Ooo! I can go back if you like. Find the kid. Clarify the information. I’m happy to help.” His grin stretched ear to ear, barely able to contain his excitement at the prospect of going back.
Sammi folded her arms and sighed, throwing a quick glance at Anita who nodded in response.
“Have you ever wondered why we stopped the programme? Have you ever stopped to consider why it had been so long since we sent anyone? Sure it might seem all fun and games when you’re lost in the moment, trapped in the Deadspace. But… if you’re there
too long…” her eyes darted to the photo on the wall. “Well…
Sammi chipped in. “Truth is, even after all these years we only know a fraction of what the Deadspace is capable of, and where its limits lie. The only thing that we know for sure – and this is speaking from experience – is that the Deadspace is addictive. Once you’ve been there once, it gets inside you. The longer you’re there, the more time you spend, the more you come into contact with the in-between, the more of an effect it has.” Sammi opened the middle button of her blouse revealing freckled skin and her black mark that spidered from her chest. Considerably smaller than Lucas’, more like a pen smudge than an ink spill. “The Deadspace leaves a mark, not just on our bodies but our minds. There’s a reason we don’t go back anymore. We’d be stupid to expect an alcoholic to sip from the whisky and put the bottle back. That’s why we needed you. Someone fresh. But you’re done now. You’ve ridden the rollercoaster, now prepare to get the fuck off.”
They stood a while in silence, Miguel looking more defeated than ever.
Anita finished her cigarette, automatically lighting another immediately after. She looked around the room at her team. The assembled mess of new wave Revivers. It all seemed so sad now, so different.
If only she could reach Lucas, Fred, and Maddie. That would turn the tables. All she needed was the old blood back, the gang together again and prepared to take on the mysteries. Lucas Dixon and his bloodhound nose ready to pick up the scent of the mystery and lead the charge. How she wished that he were here right now, but she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d heard from him.
“Nothing else?” she said pathetically. “No one whatsoever?”
Miguel screwed his eyes shut once more. “Nope. Just the kid standing in front of a car.”
Sammi looked up. “A car? What kind of car? Was anyone driving?”
“I didn’t see a face. Could barely see the license plate. Shame really, front was bent, all warped and out of shape. Pretty little thing. Must’ve lost a shit load of value. Sexy little Dodge Impala.”
“An Impala?” Ani saw the look in Sammi’s eye and shook her head. No.
“What was the license plate?”
“Lady, you think I’m going to be able to remember that? I can’t even remember what the kid looked like?”
“Did it begin with a D?”
“Maybe.”
“End in Y?”
“Now you come to mention it…”
If Lucas could see their faces at that moment he might have laughed. Ani and Sammi looked at each other, silently communicating. They were both thinking the same thing. Though Miguel was as unreliable as sources went, and chances were ever so tiny, all doors in the Deadspace eventually found their way to visitors. That was non-negotiable, and the real reason they kept their pouches close at hand. Fill in the missing gaps of the license plate, and there was a very slim, if not, real chance, that Miguel may have spotted Donny the Dodge Impala and it’s custom license plate that they’d teased Lucas about for so, so long – D044Y.
39
There was a dull ache in the centre of Kurt’s chest where the needle had been and every part of him felt battered and bruised. Even his emotions felt pulped as Lucas sat on the floor beside him, silently tucking the blanket beneath Kurt’s body to keep him warm, doing little to stop the shivers. A few minutes later, as he grimaced again in pain and clutched at his wrist, Lucas disappeared into the kitchen where the blonde woman – who introduced herself as Madeleine, ‘but you can call me Maddie’ – was clattering about and left Kurt in the company of the strange girl who sat on the armchair across the room simply staring his way. If he hadn’t been too distracted with his own sorry state, he might’ve kicked up a fuss.
The girl had turned out not to be Kurt’s sister. In the rush of the needle filled with, what Lucas referred to as, ‘The Reviver’, Kurt had seen Amy, but it had only been in the hazy recesses of wakefulness. The girl had recoiled as Lucas pointed, replying, “No! No, I’m not an Amy. I’m Frieda. This is Frieda’s home.”
Lucas had grabbed Kurt’s face, held his befuddled gaze, and quickly and silently withdrawn the needle from Kurt’s chest before he had even had a chance to register what was going on.
Kurt was thankful for that.
Now, Lucas returned with a dish cloth, a dinner knife, and some sellotape. He carefully eased Kurt’s arm away from his body and attempted to create some form of poor man’s splint.
“I know, kid,” he said as if reading Kurt’s mind. “But it’s all we got.”
Maddie came into the living room with several steaming mugs and a tub of assorted cookies. They all sat in relative quiet. She did her best to help Kurt with his tea, steadying the cup as best she could, only spilling a little on his chin. Outside, the sounds of the two ferals faded, their interest in their prey fading before they wandered back off into the night.
The drink was invigorating as it flowed into Kurt’s pipes and soothed his shocked body. He shuffled a couple of times in an attempt to get comfortable but soon found that no amount of readjusting would take away the aches and bruises that pained his mid-area. He could feel the warmth of blood near the surface of the skin and thought about pulling his top up to see further but decided not to. And the throbbing in his wrist was something else. He did his best to keep it straight but it was surely going to need a permanent cast at some point.
They drank their teas, each person lost in their own thoughts. Kurt watched Lucas, part in an attempt to divert attention from his pains, part noticing how different the man looked to how he remembered. His grizzly stubble had gained some extra body, shading his face. He looked careworn, deep lines in his forehead. His dark jeans were caked in stains and patches, and he looked as though he hadn’t changed his shirt in days. In fact, Kurt observed, it was the same one that he’d worn at Colonial Williamsburg.
After they had drunk their fill, Maddie crouched in front of Frieda and whispered some words. A moment later they both stood, grabbed the plates and cups, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Lucas raised himself to perch on the edge of the coffee table, facing Kurt. He was close enough that Kurt could smell something stale on his breath mixed with the musty scent of sweat. His eyes were full of concern, his voice little more than a whisper. He paused a moment, uncertain what to say. “How you feeling?”
Kurt tried to smile, but even that seemed too much. “Like I’ve been hit by a car.” He laughed and instantly regretted it. The pain was too much.
“There, there,” the man soothed. “It’ll be okay, kid. Just take it easy, your body has been through some shock, it’ll take a little while to recover.” He sat up straight, his back clicking as he stretched.
“I can’t believe it’s you…”
“Small world, huh? Never thought you’d end up with me as your physician for the evening, eh?”
“What’s a physician?”
Lucas’ smile faded, “Doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that you ain’t going to be alone, okay? Not until we can get you fixed up and better. It’s the least we can do.”
At first, Kurt couldn’t work out the bubble of annoyance that burst in his stomach at Lucas’ words and he did his best to hide it. He liked Lucas, in the same way that a bear can sniff the difference between good fruit and poisonous berries in the forest, Kurt felt that he could trust him. More than that, that he should trust him. But it was yet another example of an adult telling him what to do. In the last few hours Kurt had made progress towards Fort Wayne, the first big steps he’d made in feeling like he was doing the right thing. Feeling like he was doing what he wanted to do, instead of following grown-ups like a puppy. The last thing that he wanted was for another adult to take him further away from Amy.
But, as Lucas looked at him, something told him Kurt that wasn’t entirely going to be the case.
Maddie returned with Frieda and took a seat across the room. For a little while Maddie and Lucas’ attention diverted to the frail girl
, leaving Kurt to sit and listen. He was thankful for the break. The last few hours had been a non-stop ride in a car he couldn’t get out of, and it felt nice to lie and rest. Frieda’s story was an interesting one too, and for the first time since the Williamsburg blast, Kurt found his mind drifting away from his own problems.
It seemed that Frieda was just one of, what Kurt would assume to be, many children that had found themselves at home without adult supervision. Around the time the mist had appeared, Frieda had been in her room playing. Her eyes hadn’t been on the world outside, all of her focus spent on sitting in her favourite chair with music playing, and her favourite doll tucked under one arm as she pretended to read her a bedtime story. The screams had come. She had heard scary noises coming from her parents’ bedroom, raised shouts, her father sounding like he usually did when he came home late on a Friday night. Frieda described the thumps, the growls, the footsteps running. She told Maddie and Lucas of how she had stood by her bedroom door, hand hovering over the handle, terrified to reveal herself as the sound of chasing continued down the stairs. Her mother called to her, “Stay in your room. Mummy will be home soon.”
And that’s what Frieda had done. That was two days ago now.
“Oh, honey. That must’ve been terrible.”
“I suppose,” Frieda replied flatly. “She’ll be back soon though. She said she will. Mummy has never lied to me. Not ever.”
Maddie and Lucas exchanged a look before Lucas turned his questions to Kurt. Kurt tried to sit up before a sharp pain shot through his chest, and he relaxed again.
“And what’s your story, kid? What are you doing running about on your own in the middle of the night? You should know the dangers of the world better than anyone. You were there, for God’s sake.”
Kurt lay back and looked at the ceiling. “I was looking for someone,” Kurt said, twisting the truth. “Someone close to me. She ran away earlier today and I was trying to find her.”
Lazarus Page 23
