Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  “No, Doc,” Drake said. “This is a war zone.”

  27

  DRAKE TOOK WILL and Dr. Burrows to a drab semi-detached house in a neighboring borough. Although it was a short journey, Will and his father were both so exhausted that the motion of the vehicle had lulled them to sleep. They came to as Drake parked the car behind a tall hedge. There were no lights on in the property as he shepherded them inside. The interior was dirty, with only a stained carpet and a few pieces of battered furniture.

  “You don’t live here, do you?” Dr. Burrows asked, a little taken aback as he dragged himself lethargically into the scruffy living room and dumped his kit bag on the floor.

  “I don’t live anywhere,” Drake said, already making toward the door. “It’s just somewhere for tonight. There are blankets and a sleeping bag on the sofa, and you’ll find food in the fridge.”

  “Want some help?” Will volunteered through a gaping yawn.

  “No, that’s fine, thanks. I’m going to call in an old favor and get the contents of these phials checked,” Drake said, patting his jacket pocket.

  “But after everything that’s happened, is this place safe?”

  Dr. Burrows exhaled as he flopped down on the sofa.

  Drake nodded. “Yes, it’s all right for a while. Just keep the curtains closed,” he said. He was about to leave when he snapped his fingers. “Will, while I think of it, give me some of that plant … what was it called? … Aniseed …”

  “Aniseed Fire,” Will reminded him.

  “Aniseed Fire,” Drake repeated. “I’ll get it analyzed at the same time.”

  “Right,” Will said, frowning, because he wasn’t sure why Drake should consider it important. He began to unpack his rucksack, careful to put the box of ammunition for his pistol out of his father’s sight. Then he pulled out the night-vision device.

  Drake smiled. “Ah, there’s an old friend — my spare headset. Did Elliott give you that?”

  “Yes, but it’s stopped working.”

  “Has the element been exposed to bright light?”

  Will shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I didn’t use it for a few weeks, and when I tried it again, it was completely dead,” he said as he untangled the cord from around the headband to which the flip-down lens was attached.

  “Let me take a look,” Drake said, and Will handed it to him before returning to his rucksack. He’d just fished out a few sprigs of Aniseed Fire when he spotted something in the bottom of his pack. “What an idiot I am!” he cried.

  He plucked out his camera and swiveled to face his father. “I totally forgot about my camera!”

  Dr. Burrows sluggishly raised his head. “Your what?”

  “My camera! I took some pictures of the Colony and the Deeps, but more important … some of them are of the pages from your journal. I finished the last of the roll at Martha’s shack, and I’m sure your drawing of the Burrows Stone is on it.”

  Dr. Burrows took a second to grasp what Will was saying, then he leaped to his feet. “Will …” He almost couldn’t talk, he was so overjoyed. “You really are a genius!” He laughed. “Well, a dimwit for not remembering until now, but a genius all the same.”

  “Can we get them developed?” Will asked Drake. “And blown up?”

  “I should think so,” Drake replied. “Anything else I can do for you? Want your combats pressed and your shoes shined?” he smirked.

  After Drake had gone, Will made a beeline for the fridge, helped himself to a couple of sandwiches, and swigged milk from one of the cartons. He returned to the living room to find his father ensconced on the sofa, a blanket spread over his legs as he examined the stone tablets in his lap. “I might just make sense of these yet, Will,” he said.

  “Good night then, Dad,” Will grumbled, surveying the floor.

  Will and Dr. Burrows slept well into the next morning, and were woken by Drake’s return.

  “Bacon rolls,” he said, putting a paper bag and three styro-foam cups on the table.

  “Groovy,” Will said, worming his way out of his sleeping bag. As he padded barefoot to the table, he suddenly remembered the reason Drake had gone off the previous evening. “Did you get the phials tested?”

  Drake looked done in as he blew on his tea. Will wondered if he’d got any sleep at all. “No, it’ll take a few days,” he answered.

  Dr. Burrows appeared beside Will, dipping into the paper bag for a bacon roll, which he immediately began to wolf down. “Any joy with the photographs?” he asked.

  Drake handed him a packet. “Ten by eights — hope that’ll do you?”

  In a mad rush, Dr. Burrows tore open the packet and riffled through the prints, sorting out any that were of his journal. He stopped suddenly, bending his head to study one of them more closely. “Yes,” he muttered, sticking his head even closer to it. “Yes!” he said again, holding up the photograph of the Burrows Stone so Will could see it. Without a word of thanks to Drake, he retired to the sofa with the print and the remainder of his bacon roll. “With a magnifying glass, this might just do it,” he mumbled.

  “I suppose you want me to go out and buy you one of those, too?” Drake asked.

  “Yes, soon as you can,” Dr. Burrows replied, completely engrossed in the photograph. “And some pencils and more paper.”

  “Your wish is my command,” Drake said sarcastically.

  Will began to examine the photographs his father had discarded on the table. The uppermost one had been taken in the Jerome house — it was of Cal sitting on his bed with a big smile on his face. It was difficult for Will to look at it, and he quickly moved on to the next. It was of the street in the Quarter on that day so long ago when he and Chester had first gone down the tunnel under his house. Then, in the next photograph, the entire frame seemed to be filled with a single giant eye. Will chuckled, then stopped himself. “I shouldn’t laugh,” he said.

  “What’s so funny?” Drake asked, leaning forward so he could see the print.

  “The Second Officer. I used the camera flash to blind him when I got Chester out of the Hold.”

  “No, I really do need a magnifying glass,” Dr. Burrows suddenly piped up from the sofa. “And what day is it, today?” he demanded.

  “Friday,” Drake replied.

  “Will Celia be at work?”

  “Yes,” Drake answered.

  “Then I’m going to see her tomorrow when she’s home, and you’re not going to get in my way this time,” he announced defiantly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Doc,” Drake said. “But I thought you might want to go this evening?”

  “No, tomorrow will be fine,” Dr. Burrows replied, whistling through his teeth and already beginning to make some notes as he glanced from the photograph to one of the stone tablets and back again. It was obvious where his priorities lay.

  “Busy, busy, busy,” Drake said, opening a newspaper and beginning to read it.

  “I’ve done it,” Dr. Burrows bellowed the next morning. Will had been catnapping on the floor as his father rushed over to him. He was clutching a sheaf of pages, which he shook in Will’s face. “I’ve got my route — now I just need to find the starting point.”

  “My route?” Will asked. “You said my route.”

  “I … of course, I meant our route,” Dr. Burrows said shiftily. “Hey, Drake!” he called. “I want to see my wife now.”

  Drake wandered in from the next room, rattling his car keys. “Let’s go, then,” he said.

  As they stepped outside the house, the morning sun was so fierce that Will and his father were forced to shield their eyes.

  “Takes a bit of getting used to again,” Drake commented as he unlocked the car and they got in.

  “I’ve never got used to it,” Will complained.

  Drake made a call on his cell. “Fine,” he said, flipping the phone closed. He turned to Dr. Burrows, who was sitting beside him in the front of the car. “She’s over at Wilbrahams’s place.”

  �
��She’s what?” Dr. Burrows exploded. “You have to take me there! Right this moment!”

  “Sure, Doc,” Drake replied, then took a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment. “Put these on. Don’t forget the police would be very interested if anyone clocked you. And if the police get you, then so do the White Necks.” He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see Will in it. “And keep your head down in the back.”

  Even before the car had come to a stop outside the Victorian house, Dr. Burrows had leaped from it and was running up the front steps. He hammered on the door until a bemused Ben Wilbrahams opened it. Dr. Burrows barged him aside and went in.

  “Do you think this is such a good idea?” Will asked Drake from the backseat.

  “Apart from knocking your father out cold, I’m not sure what I could have done to stop him,” Drake replied, scanning the street ahead.

  Less than a minute later, Dr. Burrows stormed out, Mrs. Burrows in hot pursuit.

  “It’s Mum!” Will told Drake in an excited voice as he slid across the backseat to get a better view of her. “Wow — the new streamlined Mum! She looks really different…. She looks great!” Will could hear his mother’s tirade through Drake’s open window. “But she doesn’t sound very happy.”

  “Think you can just turn up, then skip off again? Where’ve you been all this time? Where are the children? … Where are Will and Rebecca? What have you done with them?” she was shouting furiously at Dr. Burrows, following him as he thundered back toward the car. Ben Wilbrahams came to the front door, but made no move to go after her.

  Will got out of the car. “Mum! Mum!” he yelled.

  Mrs. Burrows stopped on the spot, her mouth clamping shut. She looked stunned. Then she dashed over to Will and threw her arms around him.

  “Oh, Will! I didn’t believe him! You are here!” she cried.

  Will was completely taken aback by this extravagant display of affection as she squeezed him tight. The old Mrs. Burrows was remote and uninterested. Not only did his mother look like a completely different person, she was behaving like one, too.

  Dr. Burrows had already got back into the front seat as Drake leaned out of his window to speak to Will and his mother. “We can’t hang around here.”

  “Who’s this?” Mrs. Burrows demanded as she eyed Drake suspiciously. “Is this the man who kidnapped —?”

  “No, he saved my life, Mum,” Will said, cutting her short.

  “Get in, both of you!” Drake snapped. “This is no place for family reunions.”

  Drake drove them out of London and deep into the countryside. The bright sunlight flickered through the car windows, making Will blink as he talked nonstop to his mother. Except for the occasional gasp, she listened intently without interrupting him. But she couldn’t keep quiet when Will told her of Rebecca and the Styx’s cruelty, and how it had been revealed at the Pore that, all along, there had been two Rebeccas.

  “My Rebecca … two of her … liars … murderers? No! How can that be?” she said in a strained voice as she flitted between disbelief and acceptance.

  Finally, when Will paused to take a drink of water, Mrs. Burrows let out a long breath and glanced at her husband in the front seat, who was maintaining a stony silence, his arms crossed belligerently across his chest.

  “Unless you’ve all gone completely mad and this far-fetched story is something you’ve dreamed up between you, I have to assume it’s all true,” she said, then frowned. “It isn’t some crazy stunt you’re trying to pull on me, is it?”

  “Oh, dear me, she’s seen through us, Will,” Dr. Burrows declared, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “What did you say?” Mrs. Burrows asked, although there was no way she could have missed it.

  “Yes, it’s all a complete fiction. I went to Disneyland for five months while you flogged my house and made a new friend,” he said.

  Will noticed Mrs. Burrows’s eyes had narrowed to slits, and knew that it wasn’t a good sign. He was right. She clenched her fist and, without any warning, she leaned forward and swung at the back of Dr. Burrows’s head, nearly knocking off his glasses. “You stupid sod!” she shrieked. She struck him again, this time precisely on the small balding patch at the top of his scalp.

  “Hey, come on, you two!” Drake said, the vehicle swerving as he tried to shield Dr. Burrows from any further blows. “Not in the car, and not in front of Will.”

  “What was that for?” Dr. Burrows bleated as he rubbed his head.

  “What was that for?” Mrs. Burrows repeated twice in quick succession. “You selfish, selfish creep! You swan off on some half-baked frolic without a by-your-leave to anyone, and get my son and his friend stuck right in the middle of all this! They might have been killed!”

  “Mum, please,” Will appealed to her. “He wasn’t to know what would happen.”

  “Really,” she muttered, unconvinced. No one spoke after that, looking at the countryside as it rolled past them. Drake eventually turned onto a single-lane road, both sides of which were flanked by wild hedgerows. They drove through a ford, then several miles later Drake slowed to steer the car into a field. Will saw they were at the bottom of an incline covered in lush grass.

  As they all got out of the car, Mrs. Burrows collared her husband. “You … you’re coming with me!” she ordered, grabbing him with such ferocity he cowered. Will made a move to go with them, but Drake headed him off.

  “Let them talk,” he suggested.

  Will watched as Mrs. Burrows frog-marched his father up the grassy incline. He looked like a man being led to his execution. Although Will couldn’t hear what his mother was saying, her head was moving as if she was in full flow. “I feel sorry for him,” Will said. “The last time they were together in Highfield, before all this started, they had a flaming row. Dad was trying to tell her where he was going, but she wasn’t interested — she was too tied up with what was on the TV. That was all she ever did … watch TV.”

  Drake and Will strolled over to the shade of a large oak tree and Drake sat down at its base, using its thick trunk as a backrest. “My parents never once exchanged an angry word in all the time they were together. Not once,” he said. “They bottled it all up, and I always reckon that’s why my old man died so young.” He tipped his head toward where Dr. and Mrs. Burrows were gesticulating wildly at each other on the top of the hill. “At least yours have got some life left in them.” Selecting a couple of fallen branches, he took out his knife and began to strip off the bark, then whittled them to sharpen the ends. Will leaned on a low branch and watched him. When Drake had finished, he put his knife away and examined the clean white wood he’d exposed. “What do you get if you rub two Styx together?” he posed, tapping a couple of the smaller branches against each other.

  “I don’t know?” Will asked.

  “Fire and brimstone,” Drake replied. “That was something they used to say in the Rookeries … and how right it turned out to be. They certainly got their fire. Poor sods.” Will saw Drake’s eyes were unfocused as he stared past the branches and at the ground.

  “Those sticks remind me of when we were on the island,” Will said. “Elliott barbecued us an Anomalocaris — she called it night crab — and some devil’s toenails.”

  “My favorites,” Drake said distantly.

  “We were eating living fossils,” Will reflected. He chuckled at the strangeness of it all, then he, too, became thoughtful. “It’s good to be away from the darkness and the damp — even if it’s just for a while. It’s funny, but it all seems ages ago now.” Letting his eyelids slide shut, he angled his face to catch the warm rays filtering through the leaf canopy, and filled his lungs with the fresh air. “I dreamed about a place like this when I was in the Deeps. There was long grass, wispy clouds in the sky, and the sun was shining just like it is now … and it was weird because there was someone with me in the dream — a girl — but I don’t know who she was. I never saw her face.”

  “Elliott?” Drake inquired gen
tly.

  “Hah!” Will exclaimed. “That’s hardly likely.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. She’s very fond of you, you know.”

  Will laughed. “Well, she’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  “That’s girls — women — for you,” Drake said, joining in with Will’s laughter. “I know you fell out big time after that patrol on the Great Plain, but she respected you for standing up to her.”

  Just then, Will and Drake heard raised voices behind them.

  Mrs. Burrows was marching toward the tree, Dr. Burrows trailing behind her. She was shouting stridently. “Will! Will, come here! We need to speak to you.”

  Before he went to meet them, Will whispered to Drake, “Looks like I’m wanted.”

  “It’s nice to be wanted,” Drake replied with a nod.

  His parents came to a stop under the other side of the tree. Mrs. Burrows’s face was flushed and angry, while Dr. Burrows just looked at his feet, browbeaten.

  “Your father and I have talked things over, and we’ve decided we’re not going back to how we were before,” Mrs. Burrows declared.

  “No, we’re not,” Dr. Burrows said emphatically, still examining his feet.

  “OK,” Will said, wondering where this was leading.

  “Your father thinks he has unfinished business underground, and he’s going to return there as soon as he can — by himself, that is.”

  “No —!” Will began, but his mother spoke over him.

  “And we’ve decided that you’re going to stay with me,” she announced.

  “Forget it,” Will growled. “I’m going back for Chester and Elliott. You can’t tell me what to do anymore! You’ve got no idea what —”

  “We can find somewhere well away from these Styx people. Maybe down on the coast … Brighton would —”

  “No way!” Will screamed. “Brighton? Are you kidding me? They’ll find us there in two seconds.”

  Mrs. Burrows bristled. “Don’t you dare talk to —!”

  This time it was Drake’s turn to interrupt. “It’s not quite as simple as that, Mrs. Burrows.” He touched the top of his head in what was clearly some kind of signal, and a man stepped out from the hedgerow at the bottom of the field. He advanced toward them in rapid, easy strides.