by Tim Weaver
The final act.
Suddenly, the power faded from his arms.
I inched my face further around and could see Legion looking over his shoulder. Alex was standing behind him, with a gun to the back of his head. Legion smiled, glanced at me, and released some of the pressure on my neck.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What are you doing, cockroach?’
One side of my face was flat to the floor. I could feel shards of glass embedded in my cheek. As I tried to lift myself up and shake them off, Legion looked down at me and pushed his knee harder against my spine. His fingers wriggled at my neck.
He looked back over his shoulder at Alex.
‘Are you listening, Alex?’
My eyes darted across the room. I had a narrow field of vision, but I could see the SIG about a foot away, level with my face. When Legion had launched himself into my back, he’d pushed us both across the floor towards it.
‘You should have been dead a long time ago,’ he said to Alex.
I moved my hand an inch away from my body. Waited for any reaction. When none came, I moved it another inch.
‘I should have made you suffer.’
I carried on moving my arm in an arc, sweeping through the debris. Sooner or later, I expected the movement of my body to register, but Legion had become consumed by his venom for Alex. For the first time, he was starting to lose some control.
‘I should have sliced you open.’
Closer to the gun. Inch by inch.
‘That’s what you deserved.’
My fingers touched the SIG. I could feel the rough texture of the grip.
I pulled the gun towards me. Worked my palm around the grip and my finger around the trigger. The SIG was in against my hand now. I could feel everything. The curve of the trigger, the weight of its casing. The finality of it.
‘You deserved to be tortured,’ Legion said, almost spitting the words back across his shoulder at Alex. ‘You’re a cockroach, just like this…’
He looked down at me.
His fingers wriggled at my neck.
I raised the gun off the ground. Bent my arm back and forced the SIG in against his stomach.
And I fired.
He fell off me, his grip releasing instantly. I rolled over and saw his hand clutching a space just under the ribcage. Blood was spilling out over his fingers. He brought the knife up, swung it at me, but the power had gone from his arms. The effort pulled his body backwards. He hit the nearest wall and slid down, the knife falling from his hand.
Dead.
I looked up at Alex. He nodded and threw the gun to the floor. He was retching; choking on the fear and adrenalin.
I dropped the SIG next to me. Slowly got to my feet. My Beretta was midway between where I was lying and Legion’s body. I went over and picked it up, then pulled out the clip.
One bullet still inside.
I moved across the room and used the barrel to prod the devil’s body. He shifted a little; a dead weight. The wound under his ribcage was small, but there was a lot of blood. It was spilling out on to his clothes and running down on to the floor. I reached over to him and lifted up his top. Underneath, he was wearing a thin black padded vest. Sleeveless. It looked thermal. Maybe military. There were a series of zip pockets on its front.
Inside one of the pockets I found three photographs.
One was a long lens shot of me standing outside Mary’s house, talking to her on the porch. The second was me talking to Jade outside Angel’s. The third was the photo of Derryn and me that he had stolen from my bedroom the night he had come for me. My face had been circled in red pen, over and over and over until the photograph had started to tear.
Behind me Alex moved. He was leaving the room and heading for the landing, clutching his face and limping slightly. He disappeared out of sight. After a while, I thought I could hear him crying.
I turned back. Saw Legion had shifted slightly.
And his eyes were open.
An arm came up, clamping on to my throat, closing around my windpipe. His fingers burrowed in against the skin, trying to dig deeper and deeper into my flesh. I froze. Couldn’t move. Stared down at him as air stopped passing to my head – a feeling so cold, so final, it was like drowning in an icy lake.
Pull yourself out.
Pushed the gun in against the first piece of skin I could find.
Take this chance, David.
I fired.
The bullet blew through his throat.
He slumped sideways, his eyes darkening even more, like the gates of hell had opened up for him. Then the devil was still.
Before daylight started to break, I brought the Shogun up the track to Bethany. Alex and I carried Legion out, and dumped his body in the back of the car. We stood there for a moment, staring in at him. Even as death claimed his body, his eyes still looked out at us. As powerful as when they blinked and moved behind the mask.
Next, we got Andrew. He was bigger, more difficult. We carried him, his body broken, the bones shifting and moving inside his skin. When we got to the Shogun, we dropped him into the back, and then Alex rolled him on top of Legion as best he could. When I asked him why, he said it was so that he no longer had to look at the eyes of the devil.
After that, we rounded up the people we could find – all the drug addicts and victims of abuse that had come to the farm with the promise of a better life – and led them to the living room in Lazarus.
There were twenty-two of them in all. Every one the same: healthy, but virtual amnesiacs, a few of them at the beginning of the programme and still strung out on whatever drugs they were being forced to take. They watched us as we sat them down, one by one, their expressions fixed, a few of them looking like
Myzwik was still lying on the floor of the Red Room. There was blood matted to his hair. It had congealed beneath him, where the back of his head had hit an uneven patch of concrete. When I rolled him over, I could see a hole about the size of a peach at the base of his skull. A piece of concrete, not set straight like the rest of the floor, had pierced the back of his head when he’d landed. As I moved out of the Red Room, out into the bitter cold, I realized I was now a killer four times over.
And not a single one I regretted.
The other instructors – Evelyn included – were gone. The property was deserted, and if we drove to the next village – where the tendrils of the organization spread – they wouldn’t be there either. None of them would be back. They were running now; perhaps understanding some of the desperation those on the farm felt as their lives crashed around them.
Finally, as the sun started coming up on a new day, we drove the Shogun along the coast to a cove. Majestic cliffs rose out of the sea for three hundred feet. Waves crashed on the shore below, their sound swallowed up by the wind. We’d found a couple of concrete blocks in Lazarus’ yard. At the edge of the cliff, we tied the blocks to Legion and Andrew – and then pushed both bodies off the side. They turned in the air
Eventually, darkness consumed them both.
Back at the house, we told the group everything would be all right. They eyed us with suspicion. They’d been tied to rings in rooms that smelt of death, terrified by a killer who watched them from the dark, and nailed to a crucifix. Their memories might have gone, but they weren’t stupid. They knew this new existence wasn’t the one Michael, Zack, Jade and all the others had promised them.
Finally, when we were done, we left the farm through the main gates and headed to my car. Alex drove while I sat forward in my seat, careful not to put any pressure on my back.
Ten minutes down the road, we stopped at a payphone and put in an anonymous call to the police.
We stopped at a service station outside Manchester. The temperature readout inside the building said it was minus three. We sat at a table by one of the windows, looking out at a children’s play park, both of us nursing coffees. The fingers of my left hand were still wrapped in cling film. As the adrenalin wore
off, I was starting to feel more: the dull ache of bones locking up, nerves over-compensating, the burn of torn flesh in and around the wounds.
In the glass, I could see people staring at us. One of us bruised almost beyond recognition, the other looking like he’d spent every day of the last six years living on the streets. I could see my injuries too – my face, my fingers – and wondered how I would explain it all when I went to a hospital. If I went to a hospital. After that, we headed out to the car, cranked up the heaters and disappeared back on to the motorway.
Snow started falling about twenty minutes later, coming out of the pale afternoon sky. I turned to Alex. He was driving, a fresh coffee steaming in the car’s cup holder.
‘How did you know about me?’ I asked him.
He glanced at me, then back out to the road in front of us.
‘How did you get out of the farm in the first place?’
His hands shifted on the wheel.
‘One night – it was about nine months after Mat persuaded me to go to that place – I heard a voice I recognized passing in the corridor outside my room. When I went to the door, I looked out – and it was Simon.’
‘Your friend Simon?’
He nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe it was him.’
‘But it was.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was. They treated him… I’d never seen them treat anyone like that. They’d put him on a leash and were pulling him around like an animal. So, I followed them, expecting to be stopped, but I got to the end of the corridor and no one came after me. I passed beneath their CCTV cameras and no one tried
‘Did you find Simon?’
‘No. I was too far behind him…’ He trailed off, glanced at me. ‘And I guess I forgot about him as soon as I got to the surface.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the entrance had been left open.’
‘The main gate?’
He nodded. ‘It was open enough to allow me to escape. My body was telling me to make a break for it, but my brain was holding me back. They never left it open – ever.’
‘Was it some kind of trap?’
‘That was my first thought. But, after a couple of minutes of standing there, I started walking towards the gate.’
‘And that was it – you just went through?’
‘No. When I got to the top… Andrew was there.’
‘Just waiting for you?’
‘Just there. In the shadows. I was about four feet from the gate, close enough to run for it if he tried to come for me – but he didn’t. He just stood there.’
I looked at him. ‘And did what?’
‘And did nothing. He just stayed like that. And then, when I finally made a move towards the other side, he said, “Bringing you here was a mistake. We never wanted you, Alex. None of us. I’m sick of fighting never will be – and I’m willing to take whatever consequences come my way now. I don’t want to see your face any more.”’
‘That’s what he said?’
Alex nodded. ‘It still felt like a trap, but when I stepped through the gate, on to the road, I realized it wasn’t. I looked back and watched him push the gate shut behind me. Then he said, “If things get bad, if you try to do anything to us, bring anyone here, we will get to you. And when we get to you, we won’t care what kind of protection you have – we will kill you.” And then he headed back to the farm.’
‘What did he mean by “protection”?’
He shrugged. ‘They can’t kill me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
We drove for a little while without speaking, both of us thinking about the night Alex had escaped. My mind was racing, trying to put things together. Something didn’t add up.
‘Did they say anything else to you?’
‘No. I just ran. I didn’t look back. I hitched a lift to the first station I could find, and then got on the train down to London. I hid in the toilets all the way. I sat there, too scared to go out in case they’d tricked me. I couldn’t tell people what they’d done, in case they followed through on their promise to kill me. That’s why someone to stop it. Every day since I left, I’ve been cowering in the shadows with my back to the wall, terrified they would find me. I was sick of feeling frightened.’
I looked at him. ‘It’s strange…’
‘What?’
‘You never seemed frightened today.’
He nodded. ‘I suppose a part of me expected to die. They told me never to come back, but that’s what I did. When you think you might not live to see another day, it gives you some focus. And I just needed to make sure you got out.’
‘What about Al?’
He looked at me. ‘You know about him?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I did,’ he said. ‘I spent a lot of months being scared about dying. And then I spent the last few weeks wondering what they would do to me if I came back here. After what I did to Al, maybe I would have deserved to die today. But I couldn’t die before I did something about the farm. I know what happened today doesn’t make up for what I’ve done… but it’s the only thing I could do.’
‘So, why did you kill him?’
‘I did it for Dad,’ he said. ‘Dad and Al, they went way back. Dad used to work for a bank in the City, then Al offered him a job doing the books at his stores. We got a new TV, a new kitchen, went on a nice holiday to the south of France. But then it started to go wrong.
‘Why did he suddenly turn like that?’
‘I don’t know, but it just got worse and worse. Dad invited Al round to the house when Mum was out, to try and talk him round. They went down into the basement, and Al absolutely lost his head. He punched Dad. When Mum asked, we told her he’d had a fall while we were out at the lake, fishing. Dad couldn’t bring himself to tell Mum, couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything he had bought for her, the life he had created for her, was about to fall apart. That our home and everything in it would be gone.’
Alex looked out of the window.
‘This went on for a few months – and then Dad came up with an idea. We’d pay Al back with his own money. Dad could fiddle Al’s books quite easily. Al had three stores, each making a lot of cash. That was when we first got talking about the five hundred grand.’
‘Five hundred grand?’
‘The money we would take from him. After that, we realized the only person who could stop us was Al
‘Your dad helped come up with the plan to kill him?’
‘We just got swept along by it, corrupted by the idea…’ He seemed to fade a little then. ‘In the end, I did it. But, that night, I never set out to. The closer we got to the idea, the less certain I became, until eventually I said to Dad it might be better for me to go and talk to Al. Dad didn’t want that. By then, he was very sure of the path we needed to take, but the thought of… the thought of what we were going to do to Al, it scared me shitless.’
We passed under a set of signs. Eighty miles to London.
‘So, I went to meet him at that strip club in Harrow. He was drunk by the time I got there, sitting next to the stage, letting these strippers rub their tits in his face. He wasn’t in a fit state to talk. He wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. Every time I tried to reason with him, he turned his back on me and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to give him a chance, tried to let him give me a chance, but in the end I lost it with him. I told him to stay the hell away from my family. I told him if he ever came near us again, I would kill him.’
He stopped. We both knew what came next.
‘I told him I would kill him,’ Alex said gently, ‘and that’s what I ended up doing. Mum had the car that night. She was out with friends. I guess I could have got the train, but I just wanted to get in and get out again. I
He paused for a moment.
‘Anyway, I came out of the bar and headed back to the car and he came after me. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand up,
let alone walk in a straight line. But he charged over to me and started pointing at me. Telling me what a piece of shit my dad was. There were a couple of people standing outside the bar. As soon as they went in, I hit him. He was so drunk he didn’t see it coming. When he was on the floor… I broke his nose with the heel of my shoe.’
The lights from the motorway flashed in his eyes. He was caught somewhere, silent for a moment. Then he turned back to me.
‘When he finally got up, he was a mess, could hardly speak properly. But he looked straight at me and said, “You just made a big fucking mistake, Alex. I was trying to help you. I was trying to help your mum. You came down here for your dad, right? Your fantastic dad. Well, why don’t you go and ask him about his dirty little secret in Wembley?”’
‘What did he mean by that?’
Something glistened in his eyes.
‘Your brother ?’
He nodded. There were tears on his face now.
‘I put my foot to the floor, and went straight through him. He hit the middle of the car, just flew off to the side. And I left him there. When I looked in the mirror, he was lying in a puddle. And he was still. Absolutely still.’
‘Where did you go?’ I asked. It was dark, almost nine o’clock, and we were ten miles from my house, stuck in traffic on the edge of London.
‘France,’ he replied. ‘After I left home, I took my bank card, withdrew the maximum amount of money they would let me take in one day, and headed down to Dover. I dumped the car in long-term parking, then found a trawler willing to take me across the Channel. I didn’t have my passport, so I paid them whatever it took. Just to keep them quiet.’