Jimmy shook Carter’s arm, his grip tight.
‘What, little brother?’
‘I’m frightened.’
‘Come on, we’ll go across the pipe. The girls won’t be able to follow - because they’re girls. I can see them getting fed up already - they didn’t expect to get wet.’
‘I don’t think I can get across the pipe - we tried before, remember?’
‘But you’re bigger now,’ said Carter soothingly, despair creeping into the edges of his soul. He tugged at Jimmy’s hand; obediently, the younger boy followed.
Why wouldn’t Crowley give up?
Why didn’t he clear off and torture somebody else?
They crept along the muddy ledge over the suddenly raging river. The drop below the two boys was terrifying, at least thirty feet down to rocks and the raging waters beneath. They edged along and, glancing up, Carter gritted his teeth. Crowley, Glass, Johnny Jones and Trigger were following. They had left the whining mud-splattered girls behind.
It became a race.
A slippery, treacherous race.
Sliding in mud, grabbing on to the wet grass for support, they edged along towards the distant green sewerage pipe; the fans of iron at each end - designed to stop people using the wide pipe as a bridge as well as to protect it from vandals - grew slowly closer, gleaming slick in the rain.
‘Are they getting any nearer?’ gasped Jimmy. He was splashed with mud, his face red with exertion, his hands bleeding from the sharp blades of grass and occasional thorns.
‘No,’ said Carter.
They raced on. Once Jimmy slipped and Carter grabbed his collar, hauling the younger boy back onto the ledge. After a few minutes the pipe loomed close, gleaming under the rain, a wet, gradually sloping green tube connecting the two banks over the raging torrent—
They reached one end of the pipe, panting for breath, and Carter leapt lightly onto the slick surface and helped Jimmy up. ‘You remember? Remember last time how you climbed?’
‘I ... I think so,’ said Jimmy.
‘You little bastards!’ shouted Crowley, still wrestling his way through the mud. He was splashed and coated with it and now his face displayed true fury and a controlled hatred. His black Guinness T-shirt was plastered to his rotund and stocky barrel frame.
Carter hoisted Jimmy up, and the boy grasped the iron rungs; his feet found purchase on the horizontal cross bars and he began to climb. Carter jumped up behind his brother and hand over hand they climbed to the top. Jimmy tentatively reached across and eased himself over the crooked lip, with Carter close behind, giving him support—
They climbed down and landed lightly on the other side.
Crowley reached the foot of the iron fan. He grasped the vertical bars, pressed his face against them and glared at Carter and Jimmy - only a foot away from him but protected by this barrier.
‘Better get used to that look,’ said Carter.
‘I’m going to kill you, then make you watch as I smash and kick your little shit of a blind brother to fucking death,’ said Crowley, illogical as always. He spat through the bars at Carter who backed away, turning to follow his brother tentatively across the slippery pipe—
Crowley, Trigger, Johnny Jones and Glass were all climbing, Crowley in the lead as was his right by physical strength. His boots made short work of the climb. He launched his body over the top and landed in a crouch. His gaze lifted and fastened on the retreating backs of Carter and Jimmy.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
Carter and Jimmy turned at the sound.
‘You’ve got nowhere to run,’ growled Crowley, his voice husky and filled with the heady emotion of the hunt and its climax: the kill.
The rain pounded; in the distance thunder rumbled, the snarling of the storm. Black cumulonimbus towered over the boys - insignificant insects far below against the tiny glossy green pipe. Beneath the pipe the river raged, its torrent crashing across the stones in a fury of savage, natural power.
Carter moved protectively in front of Jimmy. Jimmy’s hand came to rest on Carter’s shoulder.
‘What’s happening?’ whispered the younger boy.
Crowley moved closer. Grunting, the other boys landed on the pipe behind him and moved to back Crowley up, slipping and sliding on the wet surface, their faces split into grins.
They had played his game before.
And the outcome was always the same ...
Pain.
‘You want to fight me here?’ sneered Carter, peering nervously over the edge of the pipe.
‘Why not?’ growled Crowley.
And then—
‘Remember it, Carter? Remember the details, the gory details? Don’t push it away like a pussy
—’
There came a sudden wail.
An abrupt and shocked cry, filled with desperation ...
Jimmy slid from the pipe, hands trying feverishly to grasp the slick wet metal. He slid from view, his scream echoing forlornly through the rain—
The slap of the impact sent a shiver through Carter.
But he did not look down.
He stared; stared hard, icily at Johnny Jones, at Trigger, at Glass; and then stared with an infinity of hatred at Crowley. The stances of the boys had changed; they were leaning, peering over the edge, rain pouring down around them.
Crowley was the first to look up, his face ashen, transfixed by Carter’s dark stare.
‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘You see? You see his fucking head?’
‘All his brains came out...’ whispered Trigger.
The boys’ faces were locked in masks of shock; their eyes wide, their mouths forming silent Os.
Carter did not look down. He stared, arms hanging limply by his sides, dark eyes drilling into Crowley - and the others ...
Crowley took a step back.
‘Don’t fucking stare at me, Carter - it’s all
your
fucking fault! You brought him here!’
Carter said nothing.
The storm pounded him with its darkness.
Trigger and Johnny Jones turned, ran down the pipe towards the metal fan; they were closely followed by Glass and the three boys climbed the iron grillework and thudded heavily into the mud on the opposite side, leaving—
Crowley, facing Carter.
They stared at one another. Crowley’s face was ashen, sweat- and rain-streaked, his tongue darting out to lick at his lips. Carter’s head dipped a little, his eyes hooded, before peering back up at Crowley, his mouth a solid straight line without expression. His was no longer the face of a child and echoes of something dark squirmed across his features.
Carter moved first.
Slowly, he knelt on the pipe. Only then did he glance over at the river below. The torrent had already washed away the brains and the blood, but Jimmy lay twisted on a bank of large oval rocks, water gushing and white foam bubbling over and around him, one hand flopping loosely in the flow.
His head had been cracked open like a macheted coconut.
And he was quite obviously dead.
Carter stood in one fluid movement.
Crowley licked his lips and began to back way, rubber boot soles squealing on the pipe.
‘Fight me now,’ said Carter softly, his words almost lost under the downpour of rain.
‘N - no.’
‘Fight me
now
, you fucker.’
Crowley turned, boots slipping and sliding on the pipe; he sprinted, then leapt at the iron fan and scrambled up and over. He jumped from the top, sprawling face down in the mud; he did not stop then, but scrambled to his feet, his dirty face twisted in pain, and limped off into the woods.
The rain lessened.
The storm’s pounding finally stopped.
Shafts of sunlight broke through the heavy black clouds, beams slicing vertically from the heavens. They picked out many things: rain-glistening rocks, wet leaves on trees and plants, a boy standing on a pipe with his arms hanging limp by his sides ... and they gave a sunlight halo to a twisted dead boy amidst a tumult of churning white foam.
There came a steady, slow, rhythmical dripping sound.
Drip,
splash.
Drip,
splash.
The drips connected with a square tile, white and gleaming in its hospital sterility - a frame for the small puddle of blood forming on it. Slowly, very slowly, the pool of blood grew - widened - a Rorschach image evoking gore and torture and hell and death.
Carter sat on the blue plastic chair, his head clasped in his hands, staring at the white tiles of the hospital corridor. Occasionally a bustle of trolley and tubes and nurses would rush past him, accompanied by a distant cacophony of sirens and engines and shouting. Carter’s hair was matted with dirt and oil and smoke and blood. His face was a blank canvas peppered with cuts and bruises and streaks of grime. His broken nose leaked blood to the tiles. His eyes were vacant pools leading deep into the void.
‘Mr Carter?’ A soft voice; the voice of somebody used to delivering bad news.
Carter did not respond.
‘Mr Carter?’ A little louder.
‘Yes?’ His voice was gravel. His voice was the scraping of tombstones.
‘We have stabilised her.’
‘You have?’
‘Yes ... but I don’t want to give you false hope. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad.’
‘And ... the child?’
‘It’s hard to tell at this stage - we need to run more tests ...’
There was a whirl of violent movement and the doctor blinked, the cold metal of the Browning pushed under his chin tilting his eyes towards the tiles of the suspended ceiling and the bright strip lights. The man swallowed hard and did not move. Did not blink.
‘Well, run more fucking tests, then,’ snarled Carter.
Slowly, the doctor backed away and Carter could read many signs in his face: panic, fear, anger, hurt. Carter felt bad. He knew that the doctor was doing his best. Doing his best in the insanity that had become every London hospital still standing ...
Slowly, Carter slouched back to the blue chair.
Tears ran down his cheeks, tracing lines through the concrete dust there. He rubbed them savagely away with the back of his hand, and placed the Browning on the blue plastic beside him.
‘
Don’t worry about him
,’ said Kade.
‘All fucking doctors are vermin. They deserve to die horrible deaths, deserve torture and carnage in their souls. ‘
‘Fuck off.’
‘‘Don’t be like that, Carter ... I saved you out there, in that fucking chaos.
‘
‘Fuck off.’
‘Carter
—’
‘I said fuck off!’ screamed Carter, lurching to his feet. Blood from his nose sprayed out, splattering across a sterile white wall. Three nurses stood stock-still, staring at him with undisguised horror.
Carter slumped down once more, glancing at his own appearance. His clothing was grey and torn. His hands too were grey with dust, scratched and cut and battered and bruised. He could feel dust grinding in his eyes and it filled his mouth and throat and lungs, making him cough and choke.
He knew that he looked bad.
And outside, hundreds of others looked far, far worse ...
The nurses scuttled away. Carter laughed suddenly, then started to cry again with his head in his hands, his blood dripping to the white tiles on the floor.
Natasha, he thought.
Natasha.
After the jump from the building he remembered little. The sensations of falling, heavy lumps of concrete and masonry smashing into his body from all directions ... and then dust, filling his vision and his rasping lungs.
He awoke choking, coughing, choking again. Everything was grey and, strangely, there was no pain. And suddenly the noise smashed through his world, an insanity of sound - crashing and smashing, rumbling, screaming, hundreds of people screaming, shouts and wailing sirens, the bark of orders, the distant muffled roar of engines and a throbbing of helicopter rotors ...
Hands pulled at him, rolling him from the mountain of collapsed rubble. He sat on a buckled pavement surrounded by lumps of rock and stone, staring up at firemen, police, JT8s with sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders. People were carried past on stretchers. A fireman stooped to touch his shoulder with surprising tenderness.
‘You OK, mate?’
‘Yeah,’ he coughed, and spat a ball of grey phlegm onto the cracked pavement.
‘Were you in the fucking collapse?’
‘Yeah.’ Carter nodded, dumbly, and could read the look in the fireman’s eyes. A look of awe.
His head was spinning. He could still see the look of fear on Crowley’s face from his dream and he rubbed at his eyes, stinging with dust and dirt. Screams invaded his consciousness and Carter pulled himself to his feet, pain pulsing through him in waves. Everything felt weak - battered by concrete, pulverised by the toppling building.
Natasha.
He lurched forward, limping, looking frantically through the people lying on stretchers and waiting for the next wave of emergency vehicles. He moved towards the helpers wading through the rubble and pulling bodies free, some living, some motionless and battered and dead.