The Poison People

by Alex Makepeace

  I thought about killing it, calculated my chances. The old Vereesh . . . well, this wasn’t him. Now, I’d still just give it 30/70, cos I wasn’t fooled by its sluggish outward appearance. To kill it I’d have to get beneath that polythene skin, and inside there would be a whole other creature, a cop or a soldier maybe. Older, heavier, tougher than I was. The only element in my favour would have been surprise, and how long would that have lasted before its instincts kicked in, along with all that experience and training and maybe a baton or firearm or pepper spray? Against what? My superior senses. Speed. Will to survive.

  So there I stayed, part hidden, part exposed. You would have seen me easily if you were looking for me. But if you weren’t. If you were just taking a stroll, as it were, laden down with twenty pounds of respiratory gear, a bulky bio-suit and your vision restricted to a fogged-up Perspex window, then you might. Just. Miss me.

  The thing paused on the other side of the dip. Contemplated the tree, the swing, the platform. And quite possibly me, just a few metres to the side. I couldn’t tell if the head was moving inside the head, and I was too far away to see its face inside its face. But I was waiting. Waiting for it to come down the dip, cos that would mean there’d be no choice, it would be 30/70 but, if it did, I decided to try and up my odds by coming out to meet it, jumping right off the edge and aiming at its head. See if I couldn’t snap that neck inside that no-neck, or at least stun it to buy myself time enough to get hold of a rock and crack its skull.

  And if there was no rock.

  Peel back its hood and plunge my middle finger through one of its eye sockets as far as it would go. Thereby piercing the brain.

  The leaves crackled, the suit squeaked. It moved along the top of the dip then away, in the direction of the house.

  I remained behind the tree, waiting until the last sliver of colour had disappeared, before falling silently back towards the beach. I hugged the tree line then retraced my steps through the woodland. There was no need to climb up to the platform now. I’d seen all I needed to. I knew all I needed to know: that this was the very worst place for me to be.

  And I felt naked as I walked, not ran, mind, walked like anyone else, through the town. Naked as I crossed the road to avoid Mr Sykes and passed by the common, expecting any moment to hear the voice that called me back, that called for backup.

  But somehow I reached the bus stop, ducked inside its concrete cover. Felt a momentary relief. Only to find someone else waiting there.

  But not for a bus. I could tell that, even before she turned to face me, her black hair drawn back to reveal a kind of dark, bruised beauty. She smiled like she knew me.

  “Vereesh,” she said with certainty.

  And I was getting out of there, I was stepping off the curb, when it hit me.

  15

  BOUND

  “It has been scientifically proven—that science does not exist! Scientists have demonstrated, in their quantum experiments, that observation precedes essence. Consider that—before the material world, came the observed one. But who was watching?”

  I was awake behind my closed eyes, yet the Swami was still chattering away, his insinuating, sing-song voice unmistakable.

  “The answer is simple—we were watching. All of us, consisting of one great consciousness that our individual particles dip in, dip out of . . . we come together as Peter, as Jane, and then we fall apart again. And again, and again . . . we are all connected because we all share a single consciousness. Our individuality—what we call you, what we call me—is a fake, a shell constructed by time, by biology, circumstance, accident . . . but within that shell there is a constant, a consciousness that runs on and on into eternity . . . a wholeness, a holiness, that is the heart of who you are.”

  “The heart of who you are . . . ” said a different voice altogether; knowing, male, American. “Boy, he could turn a phrase. Are you feeling holy, Vereesh? Still in one piece?”

  I opened my eyes. The man grinned wolfishly behind his transparent plastic mask. “Of course you are. Akka!” he called out.

  An old woman loomed out of the gloom. While the man was in full surgical garb—mask, goggles, apron, gloves, a doily teetering on the crest of his domed forehead—the woman was in a sweatshirt and jeans; her wizened, weather-beaten face was bare.

  “Boy, you were a tricky one,” the man said. “A slippery one. How did you get to be so slippery?” But I was looking past him, past them both, trying to get a fix on this place . . . this hospital, judging by the bed, the blankets . . . “So quick to get it—get your ass outta there, but then so fucking dumb. So dumb it was almost a stroke of genius. Leaving London like that. What were you thinking, Vereesh?”

  There was another bed across the room from mine. I could see the silhouette of someone beneath the covers. The small shift of life.

  “Then I thought: what if you didn’t get it,” said the man. “What I mean is—what if you’d got half, right? Got your sorry ass out of there, but hadn’t actually worked the whole puzzle out. I mean, why should you? Then what would you do? Well, it was worth a gamble, right, Akka?”

  “Yes, Josh.” The old woman—she was not English. European? Scandinavian?

  “You want to know how lucky you are, my friend? Have you any idea?”

  A television was flickering behind them, some kind of drama. Hollyoaks.

  “If we hadn’t got to you, chances are you’d be laid out on a gurney by now. Like one of those lab rats, you know? The type you get to play with at school. Think I’m kidding, Vereesh, ol’ buddy? Why not ask Vlad . . . ”

  “Josh,” said the old woman, “Vereesh must be tired. There’s plenty of time.”

  The man let out a long breath which misted up his mask. “Yeah,” he said. “Been a long day. For us all, right, Vereesh?” He began to get up.

  I opened my mouth, tried to form the words. Eventually they came. “Let me go,” I said, holding up my shackled hands.

  He laughed. “Sorry, my friend. No can do, not right now. It’s for your own good.”

  The woman came around my side of the bed, bent down and, before I could stop her, kissed me on the forehead.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’m not safe.”

  “It’s alright,” she said. “You can’t hurt me.”

  It was dawn. My eyes were better adjusted to the gloom but told me little more. I was on my back in a hospital bed, my wrists handcuffed to the bars on its sides. At the end of the room, the occupant of the other bed, an old man as far as I could tell, was turned away from me, his breath deep but hard-fought even in sleep. I could feel his organs struggling, creaking like the workings of a clapped-out banger. He was not long for this world, I realised.

  By his bed was a window, its dusty metal blinds closed, but I could hear the birds beginning to sing, the low growl of traffic, a police siren. I was in a city, then.

  I tugged at the cuffs, traced the bands around the bars. Nay chance.

  What was happening?

  I thought back to the accident, stepping off the curb, then . . . hit. By something hard, fast . . . overwhelming. A juggernaut, or maybe just a bus. Whatever it was, it hit me hard and fast enough so the next thing I knew I was waking up to that crazy Yank yabbering on, the foreign weird woman.

  Was I broken?

  Beginning at my toes, I checked my body for fractures, bruises, damage . . . flexed every muscle, tested every joint. Arched my back, rolled my shoulders . . .

  My back felt sunburn-sore, my right forearm bruised, but otherwise I seemed to be okay. The forearm—there was a small circular plaster. Injection? Maybe that was why I went out like a light after the woman kissed me.

  “It’s alright,” she had said. “You can’t hurt me.”

  I tugged at the cuffs again, more out of frustration than hope. The old man coughed. A long, wheezing cough that seemed to last forever. Then stopped. For a moment I thought he’d had it, but then that sleepy rattle started up again.

  I lay back.

/>   “You’d be laid out on a gurney by now,” the man had said, “like one of those lab rats.”

  I wrapped my fingers around the bars and pulled.

  Nothing.

  In his mask, the gloves. The man knows.

  But the old woman kissed me.

  Better to conserve my energy, I thought. Bide my time. Sometimes, the best thing to do

  Is to do

  Nothing.

  Not my wisdom. But my thing, coiled inside me.

  I smiled. So, still there, then.

  I was not entirely alone.

  I’d dozed back off when the blinds ripped open, sunlight pouring into the room. Silhouetted by the window, I could tell it was her—the woman at the bus stop, the last person I’d seen before I ended up . . . here. She had the same shape, the same easy way of holding herself. She bent down by the other bed, coaxed the old man awake with a language full of shushes. Polish? Portuguese? He rolled onto his back, this very old man with his grey, sunken cheeks, dark rings around his eyes. He responded softly in the same tongue. She obviously mentioned me because with effort he looked over, nodded as she explained something.

  She straightened up and came to my bed. She was barefoot, dressed in a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Alive and well then,” she said with just a trace of accent. “Need to go pee-pee?” I realised that yes, I did. Urgently. “Okay.” She reached beneath the bed and produced a wide-lipped bottle. “I’ll let you this one time, but if there’s any funny business, I’ll make you stay like that, understand? Let you stew in your own juice.” Giving me a final warning look, she stepped back and uncuffed my right hand. Immediately I was thinking—what are my chances? If I grab her, jump out of the bed, drag it with me? Use both hands and pull the bar as hard as possible?

  But even as I was working every angle, I could tell she knew exactly what I was thinking, was way ahead of me. I realised I wouldn’t stand a chance. Not a fucking chance. Better. To do. Nothing.

  Except piss.

  I handed back the bottle.

  “Good boy,” she said. She held it up to the light. “Lot of stuff in there,” she said. “Lot of stuff to flush out.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I bet that was your first pee-pee?” She inspected the misty gold sample. “Since you came on?”

  “On?”

  “You know. Since you turned.”

  I didn’t know. She gave me a searing, searching look.

  “You are Vereesh?”

  I considered lying. “Don’t,” she said.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I am Vereesh.”

  She looked relieved. “Thanks to God.” She put the sample down, took my wrist in her firm grip and clicked the cuff back on. “For a moment,” she said, “I thought I might have to kill you.” She winked. “So, Vereesh, baby, what will you be having for breakfast?”

  Akka brought me the breakfast—tea and rubbery scrambled eggs. It was either that or cornflakes, and I ended up wishing I had asked for both. I had a voracious appetite, a gaping hole. I tugged at the cuffs when I smelt the food, like a dog on a leash.

  “Hungry,” said Akka approvingly. “Growing boy.” She sat beside my bed, offered up a spoonful of egg, which I gulped down. Baked beans. Buttered toast. More, give me more.

  She held up the mug, tipped it too far and some of the lukewarm tea dribbled down my chin. As she took it away I said, “Can you not release one hand, like your friend did?”

  She gave me a sharp look. “Magda let you go?”

  I held up my right hand. “Just one,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “We must wait for Josh.”

  “Why? How long will that be?”

  She shrugged, held up another piece of toast to my mouth. The other woman, Magda, came in with a tray and went to sit by the old man.

  “Can’t you release one of my hands?” I called.

  Magda laughed. “Stop your complaining, baby, enjoy your spoon feeding while it lasts.”

  “Fuck you.” I turned my head away.

  “Come on,” said Akka. “Try a little more. I know you’re hungry.”

  “Fuck off,” I shouted. “Fuck you all!”

  The shock of pain across my face. Magda standing there, her hand still raised from walloping me. “Be good, baby,” she said, “and if you can’t be good, keep fucking quiet.”

  16

  Do nothing, Vereesh. Be a good baby. Bide your time. I kept testing the bed bars for flaws, weaknesses. Watched the comings and goings of the two women, the old man just hanging on. Monitored the flickering, silent TV. Sifted every sound for what it told me about where I was.

  Which was? Not in a public hospital, for starters. Not a public institution despite the hospital beds, the machines lined up like mourners beside the old man.

  The panelled white doors, the beech linoleum floors, the woodchip on the walls: they weren’t National Health Service. The women . . . the cuffs . . . all of it . . . all of it was wrong. And where were the proper nurses and doctors? The only one who seemed at all plausible was the man who’d greeted me when I had woken up, who I had heard called Kobro. Josh Kobro. And he was an American.

  So not a public place. A private hospital then? That would explain the décor, the doing as they pleased. But who were they? Were these public or private people? The authorities got up to all sorts these days, so the venue didn’t necessarily mean anything. But the way they’d gone about it . . . the way they were. These foreigners. These crazy foreigners. The authorities weren’t like that. The authorities were uniforms, officialdom, guns. I could sense the authorities, I could smell them. These weren’t them.

  Private people. Independent people. “You want to know how lucky you are, my friend?” he had said. “Have you any idea?”

  There was some hope in those words, wasn’t there?

  Kobro wanted to make a show of it. His Jack Nicholson smile, the almost childlike twinkle in his eye as he pulled up the chair. Magda, that bitch, stood behind him. But as much as I hated her, something about Kobro—this creature, part flesh, part rubber and plastic—unsettled me more.

  “Vereesh. Light giver, bringer of light. I like that,” he said. “Jeesh, I couldn’t believe it when I found out. A sannyasin, no less. Brought me back, I can tell you.” He let out a long, reminiscent sigh. “Nineteen ninety-nine, that was one hell of a year. Took us three days to hitch down to Utah, then a helluva problem getting to the Farm—the natives weren’t exactly friendly.”

  “You’re a sannyasin?” I couldn’t hide my surprise.

  “Sannyasin: disciple. Kinda. “Follow me”, right? And I do have hazy memories of sitting cross-legged in a crowd listening to the Swami, but to be honest, fella, I was mostly concerned with getting laid, which turned out to be, frankly, a disappointment. There was some kinda AIDS panic going on and they would barely let us eat together, let alone fuck without a quadruple test and OK from the ruling cadre.

  “Actually, maybe it was then, with all the fear and loathing and downright craziness I started getting interested in epidemiology. I mean, it was getting in the way of my sex life! So . . . ” he said, “what happened next?”

  “Next?”

  “Yeah, I’ve often wondered. After the old man got booted out.”

  “He died. In India.”

  “Poisoned, some said.”

  I shrugged.

  “You don’t buy that then, kid?”

  “I . . . ” I shook my head. “What’s happening . . . What’s going on?”

  He sat back with a satisfied smile, spread his legs wide apart. “The sixty-four thousand dollar question. Tell me, light giver, you get sick much?”

  “Sick?”

  “Sick. Like colds, flu. Stomach bugs. Ever had the mumps, measles?”

  “Well, I guess . . . ”

  “No guessing. What do you remember?”

  “Remember . . . ” I struggled to find anything
I could put my finger on. It was like Ma said, I had never actually been ill until recently. It had never struck me as weird, until now—I mean, you don’t miss what you’ve never had. “I got ill, recently. The . . . ” I was hedging now, even as I said it, a huge measure of doubt beginning to enter my voice, “flu. I think.”

  “When was this? When you were at university, or before?”

  “Just . . . before . . . then it carried on a bit. Hard to shake off.”

  “Was this before Daniel Addo took ill?”

  “What do you know about Danny? Is he okay?”

  “Answer my question, kid.”

  “Before.”

  “Was it before you met . . . what was his name, Maggy?”

  “Penn,” said Magda. “Arthur Penn.”

  Kobro looked at me expectantly.

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know who Arthur Penn is?”

  I shook my head.

  “American. In his forties. He was a tourist. Ring any bells?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, he knew you,” said Kobro. “Intimately.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah. Anyway. What do you know, buster?”

  “Me?”

  “He means what have you experienced,” said Magda.

  I thought about it. What I felt ready to reveal. What I could afford to, to these strangers. But I needed help, I knew that, too. “I . . . I had this flu. This flu bug. But I felt better. Then . . . Danny got sick and I . . . I went, kind of . . . crazy in the head. Got this stupid idea it was something to do with me. But . . . but instead of, like, turning myself in I, I wanted to get away. Not wanted. Had to.”

  “And what did you think, when you found out?”

  “Found out what?”

  “What Daniel had.”

  I shook my head. “I know there’s something wrong with me, Josh. I know I’m . . . sick . . . with something. I’m even . . . infectious, maybe . . . but it seemed to make no sense. No rhyme or reason. Why, I mean, why any of it was happening. I thought: am I going mad? Is that it?