Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

Turned her mind from it and the rest, unable to process any more.

  Insane. All of it.

  And suddenly there was the ladder, and she stuck the flashlight in her waistband, started to climb, fell back, all power suddenly drained from her limbs, and she had to rest, but there was no time for that, because any minute now the madman might detonate his explosives – unless he’d changed his mind and was getting out with Michael, his ‘Isaiah’ …

  Enough.

  Liza cut off her ragged, gasping thoughts.

  She had to make her legs work, had to get up there.

  Now.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Decision time for you now, Isaiah,’ Reaper said. ‘Are you leaving or staying?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be this way,’ Michael said.

  Coming to the end, finally. As he’d known it would.

  ‘It does,’ Reaper said. ‘For me, it does.’

  ‘You could still go back, let them all go, face what you’ve done. You could die peacefully.’ And Michael wasn’t sure why he gave a damn about how this murdering sadist died, or maybe this just seemed too easy a way out for Reaper, or maybe it was himself he was thinking about.

  ‘In the prison hospital, you mean, shackled to a bed, some priest lurking, waiting to absolve me?’ Reaper smiled. ‘Why does it matter to you how I go, Isaiah?’

  ‘My name is Michael Rider, for Christ’s sake.’ His voice rose with angry frustration. ‘I’m no prophet, and I’m not interested in vengeance.’

  ‘You must be, deep inside.’

  ‘No,’ Michael said. ‘I’m not you. And it’s good that you cleared my grandfather’s name, and that your father’s going to get what’s coming to him, but the only person I can blame for the ruination of my life is me, and if I die now, I won’t be kidding myself I’m going in any blaze of glory or retribution.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Reaper said. ‘I’m glad for you. And it’s why you should get out through that tunnel while you can, but it’s your last chance.’ He held up the shotgun. ‘I’m waiting just long enough for Ms Plain to make it back up to church. And if you choose to go, I’ll wait a little longer.’

  ‘I have one request,’ Michael said.

  The other man sighed. ‘I’m very tired. I’ve been waiting for this moment for longer than you’ve been alive.’

  ‘Let me cut Pike down.’ Michael looked at the dead man. ‘Surely he suffered enough? Can’t you accept that he probably didn’t know what else to do back then?’

  ‘I was ten years old, and he helped finish me,’ Reaper said. ‘He was the start of it, the worm in the apple, and everything wicked that I’ve done started with him.’

  ‘And John Tilden,’ Michael said.

  ‘And ideally, he’d be down here too, only he wouldn’t be dead like Pike. I’d be making him wait till the bitter end.’

  Michael saw something change in the other man’s face, in his eyes.

  Saw his right hand begin to tremble.

  ‘I have a request too,’ Reaper said. ‘My last to you, Isaiah, or Michael, if you prefer. That you do get out, find some way to live your life, let Liza Plain wait for you if she will.’

  Michael let his mind go to her, to the blue, honest eyes beseeching him to live.

  He wondered if perhaps he could, for her.

  ‘You’ll go,’ Reaper said.

  Michael looked at him, saw wreckage in his face, in his eyes.

  ‘I wish—’

  He stopped, saw the killer lift his hand, saw the tremor seeming to accelerate.

  Knew, suddenly, that he was all out of time.

  ‘Now,’ Reaper told him. ‘Please. Go now.’

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  The darkness he had always craved came to him at last.

  First, there was exquisite pain and the world’s-end of reverberation and brilliant, dazzling fire.

  Then silence.

  And then the dark. Total, black as coal, wrapping around him as tight as a swaddling cloth. And he dreamed that his mother was with him, and that somewhere, not far away, a boy was singing.

  And then the sweetness was gone.

  Along with pain and breath.

  And his mother left him again.

  Obliterated forever.

  Together with the man who had once been the boy who spoke to angels.

  And the monster he had become.

  The boom of the blast might almost have been taken for thunder if it hadn’t thrown Liza right off her feet, and if she hadn’t known exactly what it was. And there were other sounds within the boom and surrounding it too, seconds of indescribable noise, remote, yet inside her head and body, followed by a howl of wind blowing down the tunnel toward her.

  Then silence.

  Waves of it, except for a clanging in her head and a swirling in her brain, before everything came crashing down onto her, and all she knew for sure was that she had waited too long.

  There was no pain. Just a great weight and darkness and fear.

  Of being trapped.

  Of suffocating.

  Of dying alone.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Above, there was chaos. The old church shaken to its foundations by something no one could comprehend, the walls and vaulted ceiling standing solid, a tribute to their architecture and construction, the altar unmoved, though everything neither cemented nor nailed down had gone tumbling, a pair of candlesticks and the chalice from which Reaper had drunk still rolling on the floor below the chancel.

  The hostages, already drained almost beyond endurance, were clutching each other again, utterly bewildered as to what had happened, because there had been an explosion, but the wired front and side doors were still intact, and they were still not free.

  ‘Back entrance?’ Rosie Keenan said, clinging to her husband.

  The vicar shook his head. ‘I’d say it came from below.’

  ‘Think we’re safe up here?’

  ‘Seem to be,’ Keenan said.

  He crossed himself.

  And spotted Joel.

  Up on his feet, wrists still bound with Adam Glover’s belt, walking quickly and with determination toward the north-east door.

  ‘Stop him!’ Keenan yelled.

  People turned and stared at him, their reactions sluggish.

  Only Freya Osborn appearing to notice the man and realize the danger, and she didn’t budge, merely watched, her face implacable.

  As the man called Joel thrust out his hands and ran at the door.

  It went up with a deafening roar, engulfing door and man in a wall of flame and smoke, and the force of the explosion knocked Osborn’s wife and Grace Glover’s mother and grandfather out of the front pews, onto the wooden floor.

  ‘Holy shit,’ said Eddie Leary, back in the eighth row.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Mitchell Roper, awed.

  The smoke spread, layered like fog.

  ‘Jill!’ Gwen Turner screamed.

  ‘I’m OK!’ Jill yelled back. ‘Stay down.’

  ‘Betty!’ Annie Stanley called. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘They’ll have to do better than that to get rid of me,’ Betty Hackett said shakily.

  ‘Thank God.’ Keenan held Rosie at arm’s length, still checking her over. ‘Thank God you’re all right.’

  ‘Is it over?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Keenan got up. ‘I need to go to Joel.’

  The dead man, blown like a puppet halfway across the nave, lay flat on his back below the chancel, his face and hair blackened.

  The vicar fell to his knees beside him.

  ‘You can’t help him now, Simon.’ Rosie was behind him.

  ‘He wanted to get Patty out.’ Keenan was distraught. ‘He did this to end it. The least I can do is pray for him.’

  ‘Pray for him later,’ Rosie said. ‘A lot of people need our help first.’

  Keenan looked around, taking in the scene, shook his head, made the sign of the cross on the dead man’s forehead, then stood up.
/>   And saw that the undercroft door was open.

  Someone just disappearing through it.

  Stephen Plain.

  ‘Oh, dear Christ,’ Keenan said.

  EIGHTY

  Liza came to with a great start of terror.

  Dirt in her mouth.

  She coughed, spat, expelled some of it, opened her eyes, saw only blackness and panicked.

  Buried, entombed, helpless, finished.

  So stupid.

  She should have gotten upside quicker.

  Should never have come down in the first place, should never have accepted that wicked man’s assignment. She should have stayed put with her grandfather and the rest of the village, stayed loyal to them rather than grasping at damned journalism, which she’d never even been any good at.

  Though maybe it hadn’t been the story that had drawn her into this so much as Michael Rider, codename Isaiah, a man with a lousy past and no future.

  And dark, sad, gentle eyes.

  Not now, she told herself.

  The silence was strangely heavy, like quilting shoved into her ear canals, inside her head.

  Yet her mind was working.

  Whatever had fallen on her, she was still breathing, so maybe …

  She dared to see if she could move. Feet first, too afraid to try her arms or even her hands, in case … She shuddered, moved her right foot, met resistance, but she could move it, so she tried with her left – that one a little easier, space around it.

  Liza took a shallow breath, afraid of choking on the dirt, and kicked with that foot, and a spray of dirt spattered back into her face, into her nostrils, and she blew out, cleared them, and small triumph washed through her because she could move her legs and, though she was becoming conscious of discomfort in her back, it didn’t feel worse than what one might expect after being knocked off one’s feet and half buried – and clearly it was infinitely better to be feeling some pain than not to be feeling anything.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she said, not hearing the words but feeling their vibration.

  Gritting her teeth, she started over, found that both hands were working, and gave thanks. No injuries to either arm, so far as she could tell, and she freed her right hand, moved it up to her face, brushed filth off her lips, nose, eyes – but the darkness did not relent, and tears surfaced in a sob, and she let them come for a moment – then stopped because her left hand had made contact with something hard.

  Reaper’s flashlight.

  Not working, and despair overwhelmed her until she realized that even if its real purpose was screwed, she could still use it as a tool, dig with it if she had to.

  She rested for a few seconds, trying to orient herself. Just before the blast, she’d reached the foot of the ladder, and she might have been blown some way from it, but since the tunnel itself didn’t seem to have totally collapsed, she rationalized that she could be no more than feet away from the exit.

  New fear struck home.

  What if this space was just an air pocket? One heard about people buried after earthquakes or avalanches who survived that way but had to wait hours or days to be found. And one read about bodies dug out, victims who’d clearly lived on for a while before succumbing to the inevitable.

  Shut up, she told herself.

  Find the ladder.

  She shifted carefully, sat up, her heart pounding violently, afraid of colliding with an invisible pile of debris or wrecked wall.

  Nothing there. Just space. Air.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  Thought she heard herself this time, and said it again, more loudly.

  ‘Thank you.’ Distant, muffled, but there, her hearing returning, and she considered yelling for help, but decided that would take too much strength – that in any case, logically, no one would hear her, not for a while anyway.

  Find the ladder.

  She tried the flashlight again, smacked it smartly. No light.

  So be it.

  She stretched out both arms, feeling around as a blind person might in unknown territory. Panic surged again and she pushed it away with a low growl of anger, reminded herself that given the circumstances she was in good shape and in a good position; farther back in the tunnel, she’d have stood much less of a chance.

  She started to get up, struck something hard with her left shoulder, yelped, heard and felt more dirt descend in a shower, cried out in fright.

  It stopped.

  Thoughts of Michael slid into her mind, but she pushed them away.

  Not now. Later.

  Staying in a crouch, not daring to straighten up again, she felt around, hardly moving her feet, aiming to stay rooted where she’d fallen, still believing she had to be at least in the proximity of the ladder and the exit.

  She felt something hard and cold to her left, and it wasn’t rubble, it was a real, solid wall, still standing, and with a rush of hope, she extended her arms straight ahead.

  Nothing there.

  Concentrate.

  She needed to remember if there had been wall to her right when they’d come down the ladder and turned left, but she couldn’t because both times her descent had been at gunpoint, and she hadn’t looked to the right, because it had all just been dark, and all that had mattered then had been staying with the Whirlwind flashlights.

  ‘Come on,’ she told herself, extended her arms again and circled around to her right.

  Nothing.

  She took a step forward, did the same exercise again.

  The flashlight in her right hand struck something solid.

  Optimism surged and she took another step forward, but her right knee collided with the hard object and she stumbled, tried to catch herself, but fell, dropping the flashlight.

  She swore, tried to find it, failed, then wondered suddenly if the camera had a flash.

  And realized for the first time that it was gone – the camera had gone, had probably fallen with her at the time of the explosion, so no hope of finding it now.

  The gizmo was still on her back, though, so, if Nemesis had been truthful, the recordings were probably secure.

  Tears welled again, but she wiped her eyes roughly with her parka’s sleeve, stayed where she’d landed, on her backside, and told herself to find out what she’d just walked into.

  A mound of debris, it seemed, as she located it and poked at it with both hands; no more than two feet high, therefore easy enough to climb over.

  She leaned forward, reached past it and touched something with her middle finger.

  Hard. Different.

  Metal maybe.

  She touched it again.

  Metal, for sure.

  She tried to stay calm, but her breathing was quickening, and she groped at the metal thing and knew it was what she’d hoped for.

  A rung.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again, leaned farther in, felt around six inches or so higher, found the next rung, grasped it, felt the weakness of sheer relief, but did not let go.

  Last time she’d surrendered to exhaustion, the world had blown up.

  Reaper igniting his backpack, taking himself and Michael—

  Shut up, she told herself again.

  Keeping firm hold of the second rung, she stood up and clambered slowly and carefully over the rubble, caught her left shin on something sharp enough to rip her leggings, barely noticed and definitely didn’t care.

  Two hands on the ladder now.

  She looked up, saw nothing, felt dizzy.

  Waited a moment, took a breath.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ she said softly.

  And climbed.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  ‘Dr Plain, what are you doing?’

  Keenan had caught up with Liza’s grandfather at the foot of the undercroft steps.

  ‘Simon, please be careful,’ Rosie called from above.

  ‘I can’t get this damned door open,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Let me try,’ Keenan said.

  ‘I’m doing it.’
Stephen wrenched at the handle. ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Mind you don’t break it off, Dr Plain,’ Keenan said.

  ‘Maybe they’ve locked it,’ Rosie called.

  ‘There’s no key,’ the vicar called back up.

  ‘We need to break it down.’ Stephen was breathless.

  ‘Dr Plain, you won’t help anyone if you give yourself a coronary.’

  ‘I’m as strong as an ox,’ the old man said. ‘We need to find Liza.’

  ‘We will,’ Keenan said. ‘If you’d please let me by.’

  ‘It’s giving slightly,’ Stephen said, panting, ‘but something’s blocking it.’

  ‘It opens inward,’ Keenan said.

  ‘Can you try to kick it open?’ Rosie called.

  ‘I can try,’ Keenan said. ‘Please, Doctor, just let me get past.’

  ‘I’m not completely useless,’ Stephen said.

  And kicked it.

  Three failed attempts at getting the trapdoor open.

  Perspiring, heart slamming in her chest, tears of frustration.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Liza said the final time.

  It flew up, light dazzled her and she scrambled up and out onto the floor.

  Blinking, trying to get her breath.

  She was out.

  Able to see again, she looked at the archive room.

  Everything looked as it had.

  She got to her feet and made her way slowly and weakly to the narrow corridor.

  And heard them.

  On the other side of the door.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ a man said, exasperated.

  Her grandfather’s voice.

  At pivotal moments in life, it’s often impossible to say exactly what drives a person to normally unimaginable acts.

  The Liza Plain of yesterday – even hours ago – would have gone to the door that she could now see had been barricaded by someone – the last person down here, Michael, with a chair.

  That Liza would have removed it, and let her grandfather through.

  Let him know she was alive.

  Instead, she ran to Keenan’s office.

  Saw the envelopes still on his desk. Three of them: one for Luke, one for Joel’s charities – the paper with the list on the desk too; and the third, marked ‘M’.