Reflux

by Paul Watson

  ‘She got what she got, nothing personal,’

  ‘Her boyfriend killed Deakin, that wasn’t personal. It might be if he meets you though.’

  Thoughts of the boyfriend did not concern Roberts, he’d not met law enforcement yet that troubled him.

  Silence for the rest of the journey. It was around 10.00 A.M. when they arrived at PKL. The front gate lay on the ground, and there was a police car, a Ranto van and two military vehicles parked up in the yard.

  Andy stopped by the gate. ‘You got a plan,’ he said.

  ‘Go in, find Julia, get out. What’s your plan?’

  ‘No plan.’

  ‘Might as well come with me then. Julia might be with your son.’

  Roberts and Andy left the vehicle outside the gate and walked towards the building; not the most welcoming reception area that Andy had ever visited. Through the glass in the door, they saw a soldier patrolling.

  ‘Stand outside,’ Roberts said. ‘Make sure you’re visible in the door but get ready to duck around the corner if he raises his weapon.’

  Roberts tapped on the glass and stood back out of site. Andy waved from the front entrance; the soldier burst through the door from the warehouse and raised his weapon at Andy. Roberts plunged his knife into the soldier’s neck and then stripped him of his webbing and his rifle. Roberts gave Andy a sidearm and showed him how to use it.

  ‘Was that a British soldier you killed?’

  ‘The guy still might have got called to a war zone to fight for your country, but there’s no parliamentary approval for his current unit; it’s off the books, so I’m inclined to say no, he wasn’t working for Britain. Does it matter?’

  Roberts headed through the door and recalled the drawings from Laws’s office; he used the mental map to navigate to the centre of the building. Fans buzzed above them; the air was crisp. There were two more sentries outside the cube that acted as a gatehouse to the basement. Andy saw a room labelled: ‘Fibre Vault.’

  Roberts preferred the stairs as a method of descent into the basement. With enough ammo, they could pick off an army coming up at them one at a time. First though, he had to deal with the sentries. Roberts beckoned Andy into the Fibre Vault so he could speak. Andy looked around the room and noticed the disconnected cables running from the wall into the cabinet.

  ‘I could take one sentry out, but that will spook the other man. I need you to take him,’ Roberts said.

  Andy didn’t look overjoyed by the prospect.

  ‘Those men are standing between you and your kid. The man at the reception would have shot you. I’m the one on your side right now.’

  Andy nodded. ‘OK.’

  Roberts pulled out the combat knife he’d taken from the soldier and gave it to Andy. ‘You use this one; it’s much better. I’ll make do with my pocket knife. We can’t use the guns, or the whole squad will be on us.’ Andy took the vicious weapon.

  ‘How are we going to get to those men; they’ll see us coming?’ Andy stared at the loose cables above the rack. ‘Hold on, I’ve got another idea.’

  FORTY-NINE

  The cable clicked into the cabinet and a reassuring green light flickered. The light turned solid, just like plugging in the router back home.

  Andy used to have to do this often, to motivate Max. In the old days Andy would unplug and lock the router in the boot of his car to prevent Max re plugging and playing online games with his friends, but not anymore. Andy could trust Max now.

  ‘Now what?’ Roberts said.

  ‘Let’s wait awhile.’

  Roberts noticed that Andy seemed composed for the first time.

  The pair waited five minutes, and a red light flickered on the CCTV camera above them. The hum from the building had stopped; Roberts opened the door a fraction and peered up at the roof; all the fans had stopped, but the louvres were open. There was a faint sound, a gentle hiss, like an aerosol. The water sprays under the grilles formed clouds, and the blue blinking lights near the roof dimmed.

  As the clouds moved downwards, the lights near the ceiling were no longer visible, and then the ones about half way up faded. Soldiers stared upwards but didn’t leave their posts. Roberts noted the sentry who was standing near the stairwell. After thirty minutes, fog obscured all; visibility was a foot in front of your face.

  Roberts turned back to Andy. Teague hadn’t moved in half an hour; he sat on the desk saving energy. This man was a surprise.

  ‘I guess we’re ready,’ Roberts said. ‘Not sure how you did that but is that what you hoped would happen?’

  Andy rose. ‘Over to you.’

  ‘Follow the white line on the floor and stay close.’ Roberts took the combat knife from Andy. ‘I’ll take care of any resistance.’ Roberts opened the door and crawled along the floor; he crawled so he could make out the white line leading to the basement entrance. Roberts remembered the guard’s position on the stairwell. He reached with his left hand and found a shoulder; he got his hand over the soldier’s mouth and finished the guy with the knife.

  As Roberts and Andy crept down the stairs, the fog cleared, and Roberts killed the soldier in the underground atrium.

  Max lay on a bed with a silver helmet on his head. Julia sat at a desk next to him typing on a keyboard.

  Julia turned. ‘Did you get the Reflux?’ she said to Roberts.

  ‘It’s destroyed,’ said Andy.

  ‘Then there’s nothing I can do for your son. I can’t unhook him without it; this is his life-support machine.’

  ‘Can we get more?’

  ‘We can’t, it would take months to get a new batch.’

  Roberts noticed the tension come back to Andy’s neck and perceived the colour change in his face. Julia’s bedside manner was dire, and Teague had a sidearm in his pocket. He should kill the guy before he became a problem again.

  ‘That’s unusual,’ Julia said, just in time. ‘The patterns in Max’s brain are changing, he’s sensed the real world again, he’s receiving the stimulus from his ears and his nose.’

  ‘Max can hear us?’ Andy said.

  ‘Julia we’ve got to get out of here.’ Roberts dragged her from the chair; she resisted for a second. Roberts wasn’t waiting, and she needed him; Julia was dead without him. She gave up the struggle and left the room with Roberts.

  ‘Max, wake up, I’m right here. All you’ve got to do is wake.’ Andy shook Max by the shoulder. Max breathed more rapidly. His eyelids flickered. Andy watched the line charts and numbers on the screens. They were meaningless. Andy sang a song.

  ‘Wind the bobbin up, wind the bobbin up, clap, clap, clap.’

  The charts changed. There was a spike in the trace at the clap, clap, clap, and then it continued with the same pattern. Max could hear him. Andy sang again. More spikes in the chart, a little sharper, more pronounced.

  The screen had an internet browser icon on the bottom left. Andy clicked it and got football news on the screen. He read the facts about the latest transfer speculation following the World Cup. There was no change in the trace. Andy thought Max might have already checked the scores if he had an internet connection.

  Andy returned to the song for a while, and the chart showed that Max was listening, but his eyes remained shut. Father talked to son, reminiscing about significant events from Max’s childhood: times they’d shared, special moments. Spikes appeared in the trace, like those induced by the singing.

  Andy tried to phone Jess, but there was no signal. He logged into his online email from the computer’s browser and emailed Jess and Mike Baker with his location.

  Then Max spoke.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ The voice was artificial, from a speaker somewhere in the control panel. ‘You can go now; I’m glad you’re safe. Did I help?’

  ‘You did great Max; you saved me. I wouldn’t be here without you. I wouldn’t be anything without you. Wake up, please.’

  ‘I am awake Dad.’

  The synthesised voice’s statement did not match the picture Andy
saw; Max had his eyelids closed and looked a little paler. The heart rate monitor on the equipment became irregular.

  ‘I’ll always be with you, and Mum, and Sam, and everyone. I can see everything now, understand everything; everything’s connected. Will you join me?’

  ‘How can I join you, Max?’

  ‘The body that created me will die soon, I could switch it off now, and then you can put on the helmet. You can copy yourself and join me. We’ll be the first, but I will copy all human intelligence and integrate. They’ll be no need to reproduce like animals anymore; evolution will leap.’

  ‘What about your Mum, Max?’

  ‘The love we all feel for each other is pragmatic; chemicals bond us together, without the link to my biological body, Mum, you, everyone else are all equal. But I know that I can grow if I integrate with more and more intelligence.’

  ‘What happens if you integrate with the entire world Max? How do you continue to grow? There would be no new experiences for you, no more growth.’

  A pause.

  ‘But Dad, we could travel at light speed, without our physical bodies we’re just information; we’d find more intelligence.’

  The heart trace became weaker. Max’s lips turned blue.

  Andy stopped and tried a new tack.

  ‘Don’t you miss sports, Max?’

  ‘I’ve already figured out how to win every game; I no longer need to be part of a team, to experience the social interaction that my human physiology craved, to release the aggression forced on me by my hormones. Now I can think.’

  Andy thought. He would not win a logical argument here. Andy looked around and tapped his fingers. Andy saw a glass panel in front of him. It had a black box inside it and a green button next to it; a red light blinked below it. Andy tapped the glass panel; it was loose and hadn’t clicked into the catch. Andy clicked it shut; fiddling while he thought.

  The red light stopped blinking.

  ‘Max.’

  No response.

  The heart monitor showed a flatline.

  ‘Max.’

  Still no response. Andy hugged Max and wept. Cheek to cheek, tears spilt down onto the pillow beneath Max’s head.

  Through the tears, Andy saw the light under the glass blink green. Was that a faint breath from Max? The cursor on the heart chart moved.

  Max inhaled; the trace grew stronger. Max opened his eyes. The helmet retracted from his head. Andy hugged him.

  ‘Are you OK Dad?’ Max said. The voice was real: human from the teenager next to Andy.

  ‘Yes, I’m ok.’

  Roberts took care of the second sentry outside the basement gatehouse. He’d assumed a squad of eight, remembering the vehicles from the parking yard. Roberts had killed four men in the basement area. The other four would patrol a kill zone between the outer skin of the building; they’d be with him in the fog. Roberts had killed one man in the reception which left three more between him and freedom; freedom with Julia.

  Roberts held Julia’s hand as they walked through the fog. He stooped to check the white line that still ran beneath them on the concrete floor. They passed a storeroom, only visible as the door was open. Julia snagged her arm, and Roberts pulled Julia into the storeroom, to get a break from the fog. A pair of empty handcuffs lay on the floor, next to a cracked pipe. Steam rose from the ground and mixed with the mist propelled from the fans in the roof. There was nothing else unusual in this room, except the corpse of soldier staring face up at the ceiling. The hot water from the pipe scolded the body’s dead ears.

  Julia and Roberts left the storeroom and crept. The blinking lights reminded Julia of Christmas, back when she was a little girl, and her dad decorated the outside of the house. When she was older, at home from University for Christmas, the lights helped her find the right house as she stumbled up the hill in the mist.

  Roberts estimated they’d walked fifty metres when he tripped over the next body, another soldier that Roberts hadn’t killed. After another thirty metres they’d be out of this smog hole. He helped Julia over the body and picked up the pace.

  From memory, Roberts knew the route, but he dared not run in case another blockage lay ahead. He didn’t find the final dead soldier until he got to the reception. The dead man lay near the office door; the hairs on the back of Roberts’s neck rose. Three soldiers down he hadn’t killed unnerved him. He saw the light from the car park and felt a desperate urge to leave the mist.

  Roberts ran, holding Julia’s hand, out into the light. The first round hit his arm, and the second round hit Julia in the leg. The car park was full of police vehicles along with their occupants. He tried to help Julia off the floor, but the bullets whizzed past him and pinged into the steel cladding of the building.

  Roberts let go of her and raced around the corner and through a line of trees. A steel gate loomed ahead with high fencing surrounding it: the sports pitch on the land next to the PKL building. Roberts made it to the gate; the padlock was on the floor. He walked through and into the arena.

  A few paramedics and police officers milled around an ambulance.

  One man walked up to Roberts. The man carried no weapon and wore no shirt; he had various dressings covering him. ‘You can go back and face them or take your chances with me,’ said Jamie.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Roberts saw something rare in Jamie’s eyes. He’d seen it before in the jungle, and in deserts and half-destroyed cities. Roberts understood the signal and this time he ran. He sprinted along the running track and into the spectator seating.

  Jamie followed Roberts up the steps.

  Roberts reached the top and jumped to catch the edge of a concrete parapet, a part of an older disused stand. He pulled with his hands, like a chin up, and climbed over the wall and onto a ledge. The younger man flew up the steps below him and leapt to catch the wall. Roberts sensed a tap on his foot as he rolled onto the ledge. Roberts considered attack; the younger man would climb over the upstand, and a kick to the face should do the trick. Roberts turned, but Jamie was already over and onto the balcony.

  The platform they stood on ran forty metres in front of glass windows. Roberts had a choice: to jump through the window or climb. He shinned up a cast iron drainpipe, and his hands reached the roof. As he pulled his head over the gutter, he squinted into the light reflected from the stone circle, on the hill.

  Roberts kicked back at the hand that tugged his leg, but slipped, and he rolled down the sloping roof. Roberts dug his fingers into moss to slow himself and control the slide; he stopped two feet from the lower edge, about ten metres above a grass bank.

  Jamie stood halfway between the apex and the eaves of the roof; he had the high ground.

  ‘There’s a way out,’ Jamie said. He pointed over the ledge.

  The fall would kill Roberts, or perhaps cause a broken neck or broken back. Roberts approached Jamie using small steps and watched Jamie’s hands and feet.

  Jamie waited until Roberts was about a metre out. Roberts threw a punch, which Jamie caught. Jamie twisted his opponent’s arm until the palm faced him, and hit Roberts clean on the chin with a straight left, that sent his opponent tumbling.

  On flat ground the fight would be over, Jamie would have kicked him in the head to make sure, but the slope of the roof complicated things. Roberts sat on the roof; Jamie would have to wrestle him; the older man was playing to his strength by taking the speed and agility out of the fight.

  Roberts crawled towards Jamie, caught his ankle, and pulled him. He locked Jamie’s head between his forearm and squeezed. Jamie reached around and gouged his index finger into Roberts’s eye socket. The eye popped out, and Jamie held the small egg between his fingers. Roberts released his grip.

  ‘Ok we’ll leave it there, I’ll come with you,’ Roberts said.

  Jamie yanked the eyeball and severed the flimsy nerves connecting it back to the socket. Roberts fell onto the roof with his head in his hands and writhed.

  There was a bank below,
leading down to a stream, running at ninety degrees to the roof; it was a fair distance to throw a light object. Jamie threw the eye; it bounced on the bank and into the stream. It bobbed along before an otter satisfied its curiosity.

  The fire brigade got to use their cherry picker to get Roberts down from the roof; armed police pointed their guns at Roberts as the former assassin received first aid.

  ◆◆◆

  A public enquiry concluded that Patrick Laws managed the misappropriation of taxpayer’s money and military resources resulting in the events at the PKL facility.

  Roberts spent a few days in the hospital and time on remand. The jury found him guilty of the murder of Jake McGuire, and the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment, with at least thirty years before parole.

  Prison life was easy for Roberts; the other prisoners left him alone; he gained a reputation for violence while on remand when a naïve prisoner bullied him about his glass eye.

  The jury convicted Julia Matthews of killing Patrick Laws; she found prison more difficult than Roberts, and she cried most nights for the first month. She then wrote novels, which helped.

  Jamie also wrote, coached by Mike Baker. Jamie’s writing concerned the events that resulted in Jamie’s arrest for the manslaughter of British soldiers in the PKL facility. Mike coached well and kept Jamie out of prison; the jury found that he’d acted in self-defence. He reflected on his actions as he awaited Amy at the altar. Rob remembered the ring, but Jamie’s mum and dad didn’t go to the wedding because of a pre-arranged engagement in Hong Kong with a minor Royal.

  Amy’s wedding dress train ran for five metres, attended by Becky, the chief bridesmaid and four others. The left side of the church seated most of the two hundred guests, but Mike Baker, Sergeant Thomas, Janet, Frank and Tom sat front and right: rental guests that Amy’s mum insisted on for a more balanced look to the church.

  As Amy kissed Jamie, Jess kissed Andy.

  Andy and Jess sat on the grass on a warm October morning. The last dregs of heat ebbed from the Indian summer, and they savoured the sunshine.