Bleeker Hill

by Russell Mardell

  “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  Sullivan awoke drenched in sweat and short of breath, one hand at his chest whilst the other scrabbled at the wall. The dream held in fractured thoughts inside him and he could feel it trying to work itself together. He focused on the ceiling, the dreary nothingness there like cool water over the heat of his imagination. Slowly his breathing became steady and the sharp cold of the room began to poke and jab him back. He came readily.

  He turned to his side, turned to the girl, suddenly needing to see her, wanting to hold her and steal comfort for himself whilst he tried to give it, but as he looked he saw nothing but an empty bed. Mia was gone.

  3

  As Kendrick pulled the door to on Sullivan and Mia, Davenport turned out into the corridor to meet him, rubbing his hands slowly together as if cleaning them on the air.

  ‘Nothing works.’

  ‘The mic?’

  ‘Just noise, I can’t make them hear me. They won’t answer. Everything is broken.’

  ‘Welcome to the world, Eddie.’

  They entered the room together, gazing at the control panels and the displays like it were the mothership.

  ‘You know what any of this does?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘We’re in a lot of trouble, Joe.’

  ‘You’ve just worked that out have you?’

  Davenport bent over the main control panel and ran his hands across the dials and the buttons, flicking switches back and forth and rapping gauges with his knuckles.

  ‘Nothing works, there’s nothing, nothing’s happening.’

  Kendrick pressed a button beneath the main microphone in the panel and spoke: ‘Hill to control, hill to control. Is there anybody out there?’ His words were met with a light intermittent crackle. ‘Hill to Party. Location secured. Come in. Who’s out there? Hello?’ Silence. Kendrick pulled off his jacket, swung it over the back of a chair and then slumped down to join it, readjusting a large cushion that had been crudely taped to the seat. Rolling forward he blew a cloud of dust from the main panel and prodded a monitor with a finger. ‘There’s rust on here. Dials have rusted to the panel.’

  ‘What the hell happened here?’

  Kendrick leant forward and shoved a loose cable back into place in the main control board. Next to it he pressed a button on a small monitor centre place above the panel and suddenly a picture popped up, a fuzzy white image that took Davenport a moment to place.

  ‘Outside?’

  ‘There’s a camera built into the frame. At least something works.’

  ‘Great, if we get some holy rollers door-stepping us we will know not to answer the door.’

  Kendrick looked more closely at the picture and with one extended finger, wiped a layer of grime from the monitor screen. Their footprints and tracks to the door were now gone, a brilliantly white snow carpet lain over them under a steady shower of snowflakes. ‘It’s still daylight.’ Kendrick smiled to himself then stopped, confused as to why he even started.

  ‘This is wrong Joe, this is all wrong. Room looks like it’s been rolled over in water, how the hell could this happen?’ Davenport tapped a knuckle against a glass-fronted display and it shattered at his touch. ‘Joe?’

  Kendrick was gazing at the monitor, not really listening. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘The things she said…Mia…’

  Kendrick slowly turned around on the chair, crossed his legs and waited silently for Davenport to continue.

  ‘She was terrified.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she was, wasn’t she?’

  ‘You don’t care?’

  ‘I don’t care because I don’t believe her.’ He squinted his beady little eyes, scrutinising Davenport’s face, reading his concerns and doubts.

  ‘Her arm?’

  ‘She did it to herself. Why would you even doubt it?’

  ‘You think she’s lying? Seemed a pretty convincing liar to me.’

  ‘Perhaps we should sign her up then.’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  ‘She’s lost her mind, that’s all. It happens. She saw something here, sure, I believe that. She saw her father and the point team. Left alone in a strange place with a bunch of stiffs, well, that’s going to mess up a young girl isn’t it? Takes a hard heart not to be changed by something like that. Encouraging actually, I would say, don’t you think? In this day and age it’s rare to find someone with enough humanity left to be worth saving.’

  ‘Simple as that?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe she’s just been hitting the glass cabinet too hard. Lot of drugs in this place, Eddie. All sorts.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Easier for you to believe in ghosts is it?’

  ‘What about Grennaught?’

  Kendrick’s face suddenly drained of colour and he shifted and straightened on the cushioned seat. ‘What about Grennaught?’

  ‘He came here. Right? When the workers…’

  ‘I sent him to investigate. Yes. How do you know this? That was before your time.’

  ‘People talk. Lot of stories round here, Joe.’

  ‘No. There are a lot of storytellers. There’s a difference.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with this place. You feel it too, you must do. Grennaught knew. First time I ever met him I knew there was something troubling him. Then there were things he said…’

  ‘What did he say, Eddie?’

  ‘Well nothing much, nothing specific, nothing…just…whenever anyone mentioned this place…’

  ‘Man always did have a wandering vocabulary. You’d have hoped for a better code of silence from a copper.’

  ‘Well, he’ll not be saying anything any more. I shouldn’t worry.’

  ‘Who’s worrying?’ Kendrick’s tone was accusing and confrontational. ‘Am I worrying? Should I be worrying? Why would I worry?’

  The two men stared each other down in silence, a creeping, horrid thought working into Davenport’s mind then being pushed away. He broke the tension with an unconvincing laugh and a shrug of the shoulders and then returned to his hands, fingers working on fingers, nails rubbing at nails.

  ‘And you don’t believe it? Any of it?’

  ‘I’m having trouble enough believing in the living. I live in the real world, Eddie.’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘And that’s bad enough.’

  ‘So that’s it? That’s how you dismiss this? Madness?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m the unreasonable one here, not believing in magic.’

  ‘You mean ghosts?’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I mean. Magic. Ghosts. The Loch Ness mother-lovin’ monster, whatever. I deal in facts. I deal with what’s in my face. I’m not irrational and I don’t deal in make believe. I’m trying to keep us alive. I’m trying to keep us safe. I deal with the walking scum out there running amok through our country, those people that would see us dead and not even think twice about it. Them. That’s my gig. That’s my job. I’m very sorry if my remit doesn’t stretch to walking through walls.’

  ‘Those workers that disappeared here, how did Grennaught explain that?’

  Again Kendrick shifted on the cushion awkwardly. ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘How do you explain it?’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t have to. They were lags. All of them. Saw a chance to skittle out and took it. That’s all. They did a runner.’

  Davenport straightened his clothes and crossed the room, perching on the edge of a small filing cabinet. ‘What do we do with them? Sullivan and Mia?’

  ‘Leave it to the Party to decide.’

  ‘They will want them killed. You know they will.’

  ‘The girl certainly, if she doesn’t curb her fantastical ramblings.’ He fixed Davenport with a firm stare, looking deep, making sure his words sunk in. ‘Party doesn’t deal in the fantastical. The stories or the storytellers.’

  Davenport dropped his head and nodded, unconvincingly. ‘We owe them.’

  ‘No we d
on’t.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His wife?’

  ‘Ah, the guilt complex, of course. Though how you stretch that guilt to Mia Hennessey, I really don’t know.’

  ‘We sent her father here.’

  ‘It was his job. Lucas was doing his job, a job, lest we forget, that he really rather enjoyed.’

  ‘His job was clearing up a mess we made. Let’s not forget that either.’

  ‘One man’s mess is another’s work of art.’

  ‘What? Are you trying to defend what went on here?’

  ‘The Wash was working. You know it was.’

  ‘Dear God, man. What are you saying?’

  ‘You know I thought you were being hasty closing it down.’

  ‘You would have let him continue?’ Davenport’s voice raised and then wavered. ‘Do you know what you have done to all those poor bastards that ended up here? How many of them are actually still alive? How many were you prepared to butcher for your experiment before you realised it was a waste of time?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Us, then. Us. Them. Christ, Joe. This place was a slaughterhouse.’

  ‘Some people kill with science, some with a gun, and you kill with a pen. What’s the real difference?’

  ‘I never killed anyone!’

  ‘All those incursions you signed off on, those little food raids, intelligence gathering? They didn’t come without cost you know? Those places we have holed up in since leaving the capital, they had to be cleared first. You understand what that means?’

  ‘At times you repulse me, Joe.’

  ‘You’re in good company, Eddie. One day they will make badges.’

  Once again they stared each other down, neither wanting to give to the other. Davenport’s’ chest puffed out briefly, but he couldn’t hold the pose.

  ‘We’re all killers. One way or another. There’s not one of us clean enough to look down and judge. Party was built on force. This wasn’t given to us. Lucas knew that better than most, you know? Lucas was a killer. You think that because he did it for us that he is absolved from sin? It was what he did.’

  ‘We still owe him. We owe his family.’

  ‘Four armed men against one scientist and a bunch of vegetables? You gave him pretty good odds.’

  ‘You really think that was all they faced here?’

  Kendrick gave a long sigh and swivelled around in his chair.

  ‘Hate to think you’re giving concession to craziness, Eddie. Think on.’

  ‘We owe them. Both of them. Though quite how you balance that debt, I really don’t know.’

  ‘We owe them nothing. Lucas knew the mission was dangerous. He knew the risks. His daughter should have known the risks too. Sullivan’s wife as well. She walked into the lion’s den knowing full well that she may as well have just painted targets on her tits.’

  ‘She did it for her husband. She did it to save him. Get him out of that place.’

  ‘More fool her then.’ Kendrick flapped his hands dismissively and returned to gazing at the small monitor.

  ‘At the very least we owe it to Mia to listen to her. To take her seriously.’

  ‘Sounds awfully like you might believe her, Prime Minister? Is that what I have to tell the Party when they arrive? Is that where we are?’

  Davenport eased himself off the filing cabinet and wandered past Kendrick to the doorway, staring absently out into the corridor and then looking back in at the room, at the lines of switches and dials, and at Kendrick sitting before them and he despised everything he saw. There was a sound over Davenport’s shoulder and he turned quickly and caught something in the corner of his eye. Mia was standing in the corridor looking at him, gently closing the door to the bedroom behind her. She paused, waiting for his response, readying herself to run when he made his move. Slowly, delicately, and unseen by Kendrick, Davenport pushed the communications room door to.

  ‘Where’s Baxter when you need him?’ Davenport said, waving a hand absently at the confusing control panel.

  ‘Dead.’ The word came colder than it had any need to and Kendrick tried to dampen it with another casual shrug. ‘And you’re not, Eddie. That’s how it works now, right?’ Kendrick pulled the pistol out and rested it gently in front of him, wedged between two dials. ‘It’s them and us.’

  ‘I think you’ve a slightly inflated sense of the importance we hold.’

  ‘Party is everything, Prime Minister; I’d hoped you knew that. There is nothing else. This is the Party’s country. It is ours to shape and define. From your tone one might suggest you don’t fully appreciate your great fortune.’

  Davenport gave a small snort of disdain.

  ‘Ok, get it out of your system. Do it now, go on Eddie.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘You are unhappy, questioning, you have concerns, best you talk to a friend now than a committee later when the Party arrive. What troubles you?’

  ‘What apart from being sealed off in this hell hole, with no food, no ammo, no communications and you?’

  ‘Yes, Eddie, apart from that.’

  ‘It wasn’t lost on me, you know?’

  ‘What’s that, old chap?’

  ‘The retina scan. You always taught me it was the little things that said the most.’

  ‘Don’t fancy making it say it a bit louder do you?’

  ‘I didn’t have clearance. You did, but I didn’t.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Still, I’m just a mouthpiece, aren’t I? I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. Was it ever any different? I’m a face, an interchangeable dartboard, somewhere to direct anger. That’s all. We are all just disposable to you, aren’t we? Get on the page or get out the way.’

  ‘The Party is everything.’

  ‘So what of a man that stands against the Party’s wishes? A man like Grennaught, say? That sort of man would have to be removed wouldn’t he?’ Davenport puffed his chest out, high and proud. ‘He warned you not to come here, didn’t he? What did he see here?’

  ‘Has it really come to this?’ Kendrick asked slowly, quietly, with a small shake of the head. ‘Am I really the only sane person here?’

  ‘Don’t worry about us madmen, Joe. We are but easily ignored and quickly replaced.’

  Kendrick moved so fast, so nimbly, that Davenport was caught off guard. He heard the rip of the tape holding the cushion and saw Kendrick lunge forward, and in that one brief moment he had the bizarre idea that Kendrick was coming in for a hug.

  Their bodies slammed together and they stumbled back to the closed door, Kendrick bringing his weight down on to Davenport’s weaker frame as the cushion pressed into his face. As Davenport crumpled, Kendrick buried the pistol deep into the centre of the cushion and yanked back on the trigger, turning his head from the small blast of blood and feathers that came and went and left its memory on the back of the door.

  Kendrick returned to the chair and slumped on to the firm, un-cushioned, seat. Slowly he leaned back and rested his feet on the large panel of meaningless buttons and switches before him. He gazed at his battered shoes, a curdled look of disappointment on his face.

  4

  He knew he still had one foot and half a mind in the dream. He couldn’t let her go, and like the heartbroken pathetic male he held the fiction just as tightly as the facts, willingly corrupting himself and refusing to see the edges of its limits. She walked at his side, visible just at the very corner of his eyes. He could feel her lightness next to him, the delicate breath. At times she would move across him, through him, and take position on his opposite side. His walk was too light to be fully real, like a spaceman treading air without the pull of gravity he felt anchored down by little more than a frayed cord. He was one of the balloons in his dream, drifting aimlessly along, lost and trapped yet too scared to float away. Time and again he seemed to turn corners he had already turned and walked corridors he had already walked, but still she moved him on. The girl.
He had to find the girl. Had to find something. The dank and dirty smell that had suggested itself from the moment they had arrived was, the further he went into the bowels of the building, moving beyond suggestion and becoming a statement. He would put an arm to his nose, turn his face away, rub at his watering eyes, yet still the smell washed over him, seeped into him, proved inescapable. Beneath him there were noises, rumbles and thuds and other sounds that seemed to have no source, and the walls, those thick, impenetrable, suffocating walls, seemed to billow and vibrate, as if a mighty, ungodly wind was blooming just beyond.

  He was into the building’s black heart and now she had left him, stuck somewhere in the darkness, caught like a butterfly in a spider’s web.

  Before him was a set of white doors. They came to him slowly, whilst at the same time tried to pull away. He fumbled at the handles and as he pushed them open a thousand detached images flew around his mind like objects on a child’s mobile. His hand found a light switch and a dull, sickly yellow colour grew at the ceiling, then all that he held in his mind scattered, blown away like the seeds from a dandelion. He said his name once, in his mind, then let the name fall off his tongue.

  ‘Sullivan.’

  Fastened to the floor in the middle of a wide and empty room was the same large chair he had seen earlier and seen again in his dream. The long arm rests and high back, the metal cuffs bolted on and opened out ready for the next visitor. Hanging over the back of the chair were a set of headphones and before the chair was a film screen pulled down from the wall. At the back of the room a film projector was placed clumsily on a stack of books, pointing toward it, dusty and rusted. There was little else to be seen except another door at the back of the room, partially open and leading to a small office beyond. He crossed to it. Beneath his unsteady feet discarded syringes shattered at the pressure of his thick boots and further down, deep below, machinery seemed to scream on its last turn of life.