Authors: Craig Saunders
XIV.
More than Dead
Eleanor
Farnham couldn't remember the last time someone came to her, or what they
looked like. She remembered, oddly, what they said, even though back then she'd
been...
more
not right.
'Water
will be fine. Food. You understand? Food. I'm sorry.'
How
long ago?
It
was difficult for her to think and to remember. She retained no sense of the
passage of time. The lights were always on, so the room was always bright. But
while the water wasn't going to run out, and while the toilet in her cell that
she did not understand would continue to flush, those things alone would not
sustain her.
'You
understand? Food.
I'm sorry.'
Then
the woman left. Eleanor had only been able to stare after her. Perhaps she
should have tried to get through that door, but she'd been unable to entertain
such a thought. The steel door closed, and it had been loud.
It
was the last sound she heard until the Man came back.
She
ran out of toilet paper. There was a time when she hadn't known to use toilet
paper, then a time when she did, and now she couldn't. She took to washing
herself in the shining steel sink beside the toilet bowl, but had no soap. Even
ruined and broken and once-dead, she understood filth, and stench, and disgust.
How
long had one roll of toilet paper lasted? How long had her food lasted?
She
didn't know but guessed one, maybe two weeks. A few days alone before she
worked out how to open the foil packet with the powdered food. Another two days
or so to figure out that adding water from the tap over the sink made the food
edible.
Three,
four days now since she'd had anything but water?
A
long time, too, since she'd had any kind of medication.
Every
few minutes, Eleanor let out a horrible scream and her brain, pulsing within
the permanent hole in her skull and scalp, shifted. Sometimes she remembered
what they'd done. She cried until she forgot again.
She
began to think about who caused this, how she'd died, the woman who was sorry,
who
she
might be, what had happened to all the people that had cut her
or fed her.
Her
capacity for thought returned, and what she thought about was getting out.
*
Kurt
O'Dell wasn't much of a doctor. His medical knowledge pertained to hurting
people, not healing them.
Wayland's
cauterised wounds were full of local anaesthetic. O'Dell pumped some
broad-based antibiotics into his patient before he splashed iodine over the
wounds, and thick padding and surgical tape over that.
He
thought he'd done a pretty good job, considering. Wayland, though, proved to be
an ungrateful patient.
'Cunt...
fucking
cunt
...fuck...'
O'Dell
tried his hardest to ignore the man strapped into a wheelchair.
I
could just shoot him,
he thought, but idly. He knew he couldn't do
everything himself. His anger had got him in this mess. And, frankly, when
everyone else was dead, you didn't have much choice but to scrape up the
leavings at the bottom of the barrel.
I
brought this on myself.
He
knew that was true, so he said nothing until Wayland sat before the wide window
to Eleanor Farnham's room. O'Dell's arms and legs were tired from pushing
Wayland's wheelchair. He leaned against the window and Wayland stared into the
cell.
'Christ...
Why?
What the fuck did you do?
Thought I was a mad man... '
'You
are
a mad man, Wayland. Sorry to dissent, but you really are insane. Me?
I'm not mad. I'm...like a doctor. Old school, you know - Napoleonic, maybe. Big
saws, bits of wood, burning pitch. Surgery, Wayland! The world was rotten, full
of pus.
Gangrenous.
I merely excised the flesh.'
'What
is she?'
'Once?
She might have been the answer to all the world's problems,' said O'Dell, with
a shrug. 'She came back from the dead, Wayland.'
'What?'
O'Dell
nodded, smiling broadly.
Grinning.
'Wonderful, isn't it? You don't need
details, do you? Because I killed all the people who might have understood the
science.'
'Her
head...'
The
woman behind the window cocked her head to one side, then screamed, though they
couldn't hear anything until O'Dell flicked a switch on a console and the
scream came through speakers on the control panel.
Wayland
would have put his hands over his ears had he not been strapped down. He'd
heard his share of screaming, but this...it
hurt
.
'Turn
her off!'
O'Dell
nodded. 'Fine. Pussy.' He flipped the switch again.
O'Dell
squatted beside Wayland. A man hunkering down, imparting great knowledge.
'Wayland,
I want you to understand, we're
all
going to die. Me, too. Her? Probably
not. Imagine that, Wayland. In there, going mad, constant agony...
unable to
die
. Are you imagining it, Mr. Redman?
Are you?
'
'I
get the point.
I fucking get it.
What do you want?'
'I
know this man, Wayland. He's a man who needs killing. I've gone to all this
effort to bring about a glorious, magnificent end...only to find that I still
have a boss. And Wayland - between you and I? That gets right upon my tits. I
think it's time I set up on my own, so to speak. Obviously, I'll have to get
some kind of accountant to sort out the taxes, things like that. I'm hopeless
with numbers...'
'You're
insane, O'Dell.
Insane.
'
'Oh
yes, I know. Believe me,
I know
. No one as insane as US. They think I
don't hear them.'
O'Dell
rubbed beneath his nose and looked at his finger.
No
blood. Good.
'You
kill this man for me and I'll let you die. You fuck it up...I'll bring you
back. Maybe I'll put you in with her.
Forever.
Until you eat each other,
or just sit dribbling or doing crosswords or whatever fuck-ups do with their
spare time. And you'll have
a lot
of spare time.'
O'Dell
patted Wayland on the knee. 'Who knows? Maybe your cock will grow back and you
and her can hump for all eternity down here.'
'Who
am I killing?' asked Wayland. He was a mess, but the medicine O'Dell had pumped
into his veins gave his eyes a bright, watery sheen.
'I
took the liberty of preparing a file in anticipation. You'll take my car. The
car is in the car park. The file is in the car. The gun in the car. The car
swallowed the file to catch the fly...I don't know why.'
He
checked his nose again.
GET
THE FUCK OUT, he thought, hard.
'Here...a
stopwatch, too. Oh, I thought of
everything
.'
O'Dell
pushed a stopwatch, a cheap black plastic thing, into Wayland's bound right
hand. Wayland stared at O'Dell. O'Dell chose to ignore the look.
'Careful
with that, eh? It's running. You have...' O'Dell checked his own watch.
'Precisely five hours thirty-two minutes to kill my boss...no...thirty-one
minutes...time
flies
, doesn't it?'
'I
can't
drive. I can't fucking
walk.
'
'Oh,
don't harp on. Anyway, of course you can't walk. You're sitting down.'
'You
shot my cock off, my hand...you...'
'Don't
be a baby about it,' said O'Dell. He tore Wayland's straps away and dumped him
out of the wheelchair. Wayland screamed and rolled, then struggled onto his
knees.
'There
you go,' said O'Dell, throwing his hands into the air.
'It's a miracle!'
O'Dell
put the muzzle of his gun in Wayland's ear. 'Or, I just kill you now, bring you
back, and we'll call it quits?'
'Fuck
off.'
'Thought
so.' O'Dell fired into the large window. The report was tremendous,
huge
,
in the tight room. The bullet ricocheted from the thick glass and hit a bank of
speakers before it tore through and into the plaster wall behind.
'Starter's
orders, Wayland.'
Wayland
began to shuffle toward the elevator, O'Dell watching him all the way.
*
Eleanor
didn't know that the man who left had stolen her son. If she'd known, still she
would only have been able to stand before the wide window as he walked away.
The
man in the suit stared into her cell. She thought of him as the Man, but today
he seemed different. Something red and furious in his eyes, and his hair, messed.
He left her alone and she knew he would not be back.
Eleanor
seemed intent on standing still forever, merely to stare at the spot where The
Man had been. An observer might have been convinced she still saw him, or some
kind of afterglow, as though she waited for the memory of the Man to depart.
But
she wasn't staring after him, nor fascinated by his shape, style, even that
peculiar aura of power that filled any space he entered.
She
stared at the mark he left behind.
Now
and then, she would cock her head, as though in thought. When she did, the
shift in pressure around the bare section of her skull sent her into a long,
painful fit of screaming. When the pain passed, she returned and stared with a
slow, patient kind of thought, like a child might stare at a puzzle and wonder
which colour went where, or which shape. She did the same thing for perhaps
twenty hours.
Stare,
cock her head, scream. Then repeat her actions over again.
Eleanor
no longer slept. She felt only the barest sense of fatigue.
Finally,
her mouth dry, her bowels and bladder complaining, she ate the last of her food
- just dust from the discarded packs of dried out nutrients. She drank, leaning
to do so while she emptied herself into the toilet bowl. She didn't know, yet,
to flush, and though she remembered toilet paper, she had none.
Her
gaze returned the spot where O'Dell had stood.
She
walked forward and laid her hand against the window. Her eyes closed for a
moment. She knew what she had to do.
Eleanor
dug inside her head and began to pull, one hand each side of the rent they had
cut into her. Long, filthy nails scraped at the exposed part of her brain and
one leg became numb, but jittered with spasms. Her other leg and the window
held her up. She carried on yanking until she tore the metal clasp in her head
free. Blood, bone, some brain matter, hair, skin, all torn.
When
it was done she sagged, then slid out on the floor in a wretched heap.
Later,
when she rose, Eleanor remembered why she hurt herself. To heal, but not only
that. The metal was a tool.
The
only hope the Man had ever allowed her was right there - the long, shallow rut
in the glass that his bullet left behind.
And
if a bullet could mark the glass, then the steel from her head could, too. If
the steel could scratch, it could carve.
Eleanor
began to scrape at the glass slowly and carefully, and with the patience of the
dead.
*
XV.
A Short Walk, for Some
In
some dystopia, the rig might have been violent, horrifying - certainly for a
lone woman. And yet it felt safe. Something in the atmosphere, perhaps. She
could feel violence, now, as a vibration on the air. For months, she'd been
surrounded by danger, suffused in it. Now, she could often sense it before it
came. Violence was sudden, yes, but like a squall or summer lightning storm,
there was a smell on the air that almost always preceded it.
Still,
Francis knew such things could catch you out, even when you imagined you were
safe. So she shared a room with Edgar and George, not because she needed the
comfort, but as an added layer of security. She wasn't some super soldier,
trained in martial arts. She could no more defend herself with a knife than
some clever, improvised weapon. She could pull a trigger. But so could anyone.
There
were no guns on the rig. Probably a wise and sensible choice, too. Men, plenty
of them, confined for long stretches of time. There was alcohol, but that had
long gone. Men had died, through accident and idiocy and pure bad luck. There
were thirteen people on the rig. John Wake, the three of them, and nine men
who'd survived this long. But they wouldn't last forever.
They
had to get off.
If
they didn't, they were dead, and maybe a hundred or five hundred years in some
unimaginable future, a new people would find them frozen against the steel.
More likely, perhaps, that the rig would just give in and slip beneath the
rough seas without anyone to notice at all.
She
lay in the dark, worrying, listening to the night sounds. The blast of the
wind, so constant that it became white noise. The sea's efforts to swallow them
continued. Sleet hit the metal sides of their quarters slantways, a hollow
drone that reminded her of distant holidays in caravan parks. Rain would
thunder against the tin roof, keeping her awake. As a child she'd hated it,
hated the hard sound, the viciousness of storms. As a teen, she'd grown to love
that sound, and sought it out. When she'd bought her first car she often sat
with the engine off, somewhere away from traffic, and waited for a dark cloud
to bring the rain. Then, she would sit still, her hands in her lap or tight on
the wheel. She'd close her eyes, and just listen to that wonderful sound.
Drumming on tin, right above her head.
So
thinking, she lulled herself to sleep.
A
hand on her leg brought her sharply to wake. She kicked out, instinctively, and
the hand was snatched away.
The
instant before natural reaction freed her, though, George's words reached her
mind.
Francis
,
he said.
'Shit,
George? Are you alright? Did I hurt you?' she spoke aloud, forgetting to speak
mind-to-mind.
He
didn't reply, because if they weren't touching he couldn't speak.
Edgar,
on the top bunk opposite her, stirred at the sound of her voice. She quieted,
trying not to wake him. If George had wanted Edgar, Edgar would be awake, too.
She
could see nothing, so reached out a tentative hand, and George's hand found
hers at the same time. This time, expecting his touch, she did not flinch, but
let herself listen to his strange, silent voice.
Francis.
Will you walk with me?
'Walk?'
she whispered. 'Can you?'
If
you can manage, I can manage. We'll help each other.
With
his voice, in her mind, Francis sensed and felt as much, if not more, than his
simple words conveyed.
'Are
we leaving, George? We are, aren't we?'
I'm
not sure,
he told her, but the way he said it sounded like at least half a
lie.
Yet. But we need to learn to walk. Let's teach each other.
She pushed
herself from the bunk, his hand in hers.
'Sure?'
she asked one final time.
Sure,
he
said.
She
pulled him up. He staggered, his legs too weak to hold him, but she was there.
Her arm under his, around his tiny chest. The pain in her feet was constant,
and standing without her crutches sent needles of pain stabbing, it seemed, as
high as her hips. But she gritted her teeth, because he needed her.
I
need him, too,
she
thought. But she tried to keep this to herself.
*
Wayland
Redman's agony was of a different kind. His felt personal, like hatred, or some
kind of betrayal. Worse, too, because no one had ever hurt him like this. He'd
killed kids, women, a few men. He'd poured pain onto people like boiling water
into his morning coffee - no big deal. Just something to wake him up.
He
was a sick man. The kind who'd get hard, or laugh, at another's pain.
Sometimes, too, it affected him. He could find a person in death touching. Once
or twice he'd cried, and plenty of times he'd said sorry, over and over, while
he made people bleed and scream, but it wasn't a thing he'd been able to stop.
He was an alcoholic. Murder was his tipple of choice. He might feel ashamed,
dirty, sometimes, but he always came back to it. On the wagon, for years at a
time, then it would lure him again. A glass like ruby port, though, rather that
something amber, tinkling and full of ice.
But
no one had ever hurt
him
before.
Sheer
agony coursed through him each time he shifted gear in the borrowed car. His
left foot would push down the clutch, or his right, the accelerator. When he
moved his legs, bolts of horrible energy coursed through his balls, his spine,
into his groin and guts. So many times his sight dimmed and his hearing switched
from the roar of the wet road to that peculiar underwater echo that people get
when their consciousness wavers and they feel that slip from the edge of waking
to the long abyss of sleep.
To
sleep would be to die.
He
remembered the woman in the cell.
O'Dell
was a liar, yes, but when it came to pain and retribution, the man's promises
were solid as steel. Wayland did not believe for a minute that the woman's
condition was a lie. She was not some simple test experiment, a torture victim
or dumb captive. O'Dell said she came back from the dead, then she had indeed
come back. He brought her back.
He'd
do it him, too. Wayland had seen into the woman's eyes. He knew she wasn't some
idiot husk. She
knew
what had been done to her. A corpse, raised, only
to learn humanity again and fall to dust after years, perhaps even to find the
insanity of the grave once again, all the while watching it creep over her.
Wayland
could not bear that. Better a clean end...or...
He
imagined finishing this job, and then hunting O'Dell. The pain,
the chance
,
would be worth it.
'But
I'd never win.'
He
spoke to himself in the sturdy car, his words deadened, and it was true, of
course. O'Dell would always win, because O'Dell saw the future, didn't he?
The
wastelands Wayland drove through were testament to that. Burned factories,
flattened supermarkets. The remnant of petrol stations and service stations
along the road he drove, perhaps burned for fun or simple by accident.
Fireballs from gas lines obliterated whole rows of houses. Brickwork remained
in random spots along the road like shattered teeth after some brawl. Bodies,
just grey lumps under a coating of sleet and ice. Cars, bigger bumps on the
landscape and the road ahead, or pile-ups, lorries torched and gutted, craters
from small military engagements near the end. Some of the larger cities would
be nothing but dips on the landscape, their girth now only broken by skeletal
towers where people once took elevators to their jobs in the sky.
O'Dell's
doing, all of it. A man who'd burned the world. A man Wayland could not fight.
Would
not.
When
he weighed his fear of O'Dell against the insult of his missing parts, O'Dell
proved heavier.
So
he bit down on the pain with each gear shift, or when he was forced to brake or
speed up. Every time he had to use his right hand, so much of it just nubs of
bone, he thought of O'Dell, and the horrible fire that burned in his insane
eyes, and he took the pain.
Four
hours he drove, sometimes crying out, sometimes simply crying.
Pure
torture until the satellite navigation system in the car told him to take his
final turn. A synthesised voice, granting a short reprieve. He expected a giant
steel and concrete maw that opened to a secure underground bunker, but it was a
simple row of tower blocks. Old things, with a web of walkways connecting three
buildings. As little as seven or eight weeks ago, men and women had probably barely
survived in places such as this. Old, poor people would die in the cold of
winter. Young men with short, dangerous dogs would have prowled those high
walkways. Men who wore coats all year long probably sold vials or packages of
the kind of medicines that let people live in such places without going mad
from despair and throwing themselves thirty floors to a grateful death.
He
counted the windows, from the first floor to the last.
It
wasn't thirty floors, but twenty-three.
The
ruined parts of him throbbed at the thought of it. Then, he balanced that
against O'Dell's face, leering at him endless through a thick plate of glass.
'Cunt,'
he said. He took out the gun O'Dell allowed him.
Phone
in one pocket, a stop watch on his wrist, and the gun in his left hand.
Tears
ran down his face as he walked through the grey deluge that splattered against
his downturned face.
'Fuck
you, O'Dell,' he said when he was inside the tower block, looking at the first
of hundreds of concrete steps. 'Fuck you.'
*
George's
brow was damp with sweat and his breath laboured when he and Francis reached
the end of the short, dimly lit hall. He leaned heavily on Francis' arm. Both legs
shook, his left more than the right. His grip on her weakened, too, until she
was all but carrying him.
'Hey,
this is supposed to be exercise for both of us. You're like a sack of
potatoes.'
He
smiled wearily. But he happy. That much was obvious.
'You
should be happy,'
she told him.
'A week ago you could barely stand.
You're getting stronger. That's you, George. Not some virus or magic potion or
whatever they gave you. You. Understand? It's okay to feel a little pride,
sometimes.'
Thank
you.
He didn't speak in her mind this time, but mouthed the words, simple
enough for Francis to understand.
'You
done for the night? I don't know about you but I could sleep.'
She could,
too. Her feet pained her, her back sore from lugging George down the hall. Bed
seemed like a good place to be right now.
George,
however, shook his head. This time, when he touched her hand, she knew he had
something to say that couldn't be read on his lips.
It's
late, Francis...but we have something to do. Somewhere quiet. Away from Edgar.
'You're
sly, George, you know that?'
Like
a fox.
He grinned.
But this is dangerous, Francis.
'It's
him, isn't it?' she asked.
George
nodded.
He's...occupied. Don't ask how I know. I just do. If his mind's on
other things, we might be able to...
'Sneak
in?'
George
nodded again.
Are you up for a bit of spying?
'Always,'
she said. 'Come on. It should be quiet in the common room.'
Sometimes,
if a man couldn't sleep, he might be in the common room. But the remaining men
agreed to ration food and drinks and cigarettes before Francis and her friends
even thought about trying to hop the channel and failing. No television or
radio. Plenty of old, well-thumbed magazines, and very few books. The end of
the world, it seemed, was a shitty place for insomniacs.