But push him too far and it’d be like throwing a lighted zippo into a big old box of fireworks. Your head would get blown off while your mouth would still be smirking about how daringly devil-may-care smart you were.
No, he wasn’t just some kid. He was more like an unfinished warrior killing machine.
They way he’d saved Joe from what was once Andy.
His old friend. Andy Pells, his ever indulgent buddy-bud. But let’s be straight here, it wasn’t the old Andy. It was a new, improved version. Andy mark II, the mutant remix. Andy, ripped like Giger’s alien and thinner than Andy’s own wettest dreams would ever have conjured. Andy full of razored teeth and running like an athlete in Hellraiser Olympic, the hellish edition gone wrong, the more-wronger-still edit.
Yep, Elliot was okay. More than okay. A kid Joe would have been proud of.
Joe looked at the clock and did a double take.
Jesus fucking wept and then got his skirt all tangled up. It was two in the afternoon. Maybe the clock was bollocksed. Dodgy electricity flow and whatever the fuck his old friend had hooked up to this place.
Andy? That friend? Dead murdered butchered monster mutation Andy Pells?
Joe slid out of the beautifully soft bed and padded to the bathroom. Relieved himself and stilled his hand when he went to flush. Fuck flushing. That was old school. Lost and left in a roadside ditch way back, in the days when there were firemen and policemen and law. Plumbers and reliable water supplies, affordable luxury ...and more people than monsters.
He basin-washed himself with scented soap and bamboo cotton towels and discarded the towels afterwards. Chucked them on the floor in damp heaps.
Let them seep and dry and smell.
Stink the place up as much as you want, the cleaners wouldn’t be complaining because, odds were, that the cleaners were all fucking claw-handed, stiletto-toothed bitey things.
He studied his current clothes and decided that they’d do as well as anything. Wandered out of the bedroom and found himself in the upper gallery again. Lit a cigarette and contemplated the view.
Glorious and panoramic.
Filled with potential threat.
Loaded with an image of stubborn smoke in the sky, drifting up from the ruins of Marlborough. Joe turned away. The sun confirmed the clock. It was late afternoon.
Where do we go from here Joe-Joe-boyo?
Down to the lake I fear.
Or down to bar I fear?
Come on down Joe. It’s good down here. We all laugh, we laugh a lot. We laugh, even when it’s not funny. We’re happy-go-lucky-fucking-me. And it’s cheap.
Free maybe, if you’re the right kinda guy.
The kind of guy who hides behind the door when the wolf is pawing it.
The kind of guy who drives away when the getting is good, even if the fat bird isn’t accounted for. Missing in inaction. We never leave a man behind, unless it’s a fat old girl, who witters on like a broken seventy-eight, who might just be one cake short of the full dozen and who might just be a right-royal pain in the arse. And we’ve got a headache, right?
Right?
Right? Joey-Joe-let-me-down-easy-Joe?
Come on down Joe and take another dip in the water.
Where suicide is painful and lurid solutions lurk, submerged just below the slightly scary, but ever so temptingly faceted glass surfaces. Beautifully bottled and maturely aged with care and careless understanding.
Joe dragged on the cigarette until it was just so much ash and lazily floating vapour drifting into the atrium.
He’d go down, but not to the lake. Not to the shore, not to the sea or the lake, or any other stretch of the water. Not today.
They’d go north but, again, not today.
The boy hadn’t stirred, presumably still asleep. Understandable given the circumstances.
And Joe was ravenously hungry. And his mouth was as dry as the bottom of a budgie’s cage. Smoking without a drink was a bitch.
<><><>
Elliot dreamed and dreamed again.
Of imagined horrors and those that were all too real. He didn’t remember any of them and, if asked, would have said that he’d enjoyed the first real rest he’d had in a week. Nevertheless, when he woke, he moved like a startled deer, springing across the bed into a corner, wincing at the hot flair of pain in his leg. It took a few minutes for him to get his shit in order.
There was plenty of shit to get organised.
He knew where he was.
The man, Joe, had ploughed the road free of pursuers and picked him up when he was running on empty. Saved him if you wanted to be absolutely accurate. In turn, Elliot had taken out the former owner of this contemporary castle and then Joe had picked him up again when he’d stumbled and fell.
Looked after him.
He’d chosen this room because it had a closed grill over the wall-sized window, a lock on the door, and its own toilet. After the last day or two, that amounted to paradise.
There was light filtering through the window but he didn’t know the time, his watch was in a drawer in a thatched cottage in Bishop’s Caining.
That little piece of electronic wizardry was gone for good.
He had to look at the bedside clock to get any idea of time and he thought that might be wrong. It showed four twenty-three. The sun didn’t rise that early, so it must be afternoon, and that was just bullshit. He couldn’t have slept through the night and most of the next day.
Unbidden, his mind wandered to Thomas Beme, then shied away, like one of those horses you see in films, tippy-tapping the ground, getting all dancey and dangerous and ready to bolt.
Elliot really didn’t want to dwell on Beme.
That weirdo.
Weirdo? Beme wasn’t just weird, he was full on bat-crap crazy. Looney tunes. Elliot didn’t have any great knowledge on which to base a judgement, but he thought that guy might have been a real life psychopath.
He was okay, he’d gotten away.
However, if Beme hadn’t got careless and been chewed up in the meantime, Beme was still out there. Cruising the roads of catastrophe, getting his jollies wherever he could find them.
No one to stop him. No one investigating, no one tracking him down.
That was nearly as scary as the man himself. If there could be one Thomas Beme, there could be more. He ought to tell Joe about Beme, but that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t intend ever talking about it.
Not to anyone.
He sighed. Sitting there musing on the last few days wasn’t getting him to George, or Johreg, as he commonly found himself calling George. It had gone from being a tease to a term of endearment. Even George thought it was bearably cool. If anything, it was making it worse. He wandered into the bathroom and freshened up, made a mental note to take some of this with him. The soap dispenser, toothbrush and toothpaste. Essential stuff. Maybe shove it in one of the bags he’d seen in the house.
He considered the clothes he’d chosen the night before. Expensive designer gear. Jeans that were a little short and had to be cinched with a belt. The belt was only just small enough. An Armani hoody that was probably going to be too hot but he’d wanted the kangaroo pocket for practical purposes. Underwear that was too big but somehow fitted. Figure that out.
All in all, he felt like a moderately successful rent boy.
George would like that. Elliot would laugh when he said it and George would laugh with him, and then they’d both laugh more, feeding off each other. Then they’d talk and talk, and laugh again.
For that to happen, he first had to get to George.
He found Joe downstairs waiting for him to appear, food prepared and ready to be cooked. He was grateful for the huge glass of orange juice Joe handed him.
“Full English okay fella?” Joe asked.
“The fridge is still working and pretty well stocked so we may as well make the most of it.”
They sat to eat. With the exterior shutters closed it was dim but comfortable.
“What time is it?” Elliot asked through a mouthful of eggs and bacon.
“About five. I’ve only been up a couple of hours. I guess we must have been more tired than we realised,” Joe replied.
Elliot grimaced.
“Shit. Oh shit, shit, shit. That’s just great. I don’t believe it, sleeping til this time. I should be travelling. I need to get to George and I’ve wasted another whole day.”
Joe paused, a loaded fork halfway to his mouth which he placed back on the plate as he sat back. He sighed before he spoke.
“Yeah, I know, it’s a pisser. I’m sorry, but we aren’t going anywhere right now. Being on the road at night has got to be last resort stuff these days, you know what I mean? And to be honest, I’m still ...ahh ...what would it be, in medical terminology ...ahh, yeah, that’s it ...fucking knackered.”
Elliot couldn’t help but smile. It sneaked onto his face like a hair straying from his ponytail.
“We get ourselves organised tonight and set off at dawn.”
Elliot nodded.
“Elliot, I promise you if he’s there, we’ll find him but we’ll need to have our wits about us if we’re going to fight our way through those fecking bar steward things.”
Another nod and half smile.
“Listen. I ...I don’t feel like I’ve acquitted myself too well since all the smelly brown stuff hit the fan. Since everyone collapsed. Not just since we met, before that as well.
I owe you for what you did yesterday ... but it’s more than that. I can’t explain, but I want to find him as well now. Your brother, George. I want to find him.
If he was my kid, well, I’d want him to be with you and I’d hope someone like me might help you ...and besides, I don’t have anything better to do.”
Elliot smiled and nodded.
A genuinely full smile this time because he believed Joe meant it.
And Joe did.
Even with the best intentions, promises made and promises kept can sometimes be entirely different things.
Chapter 3.
Office Life.
That night, the night when Philip Sault arrived at their office refuge with the big male nurse and wounded woman, was stranger in many way than any Adalia could remember. She was in a strange place with unknown people around her. Some more unknown than others.
It joined a recent parade of strange nights, but felt more real in many ways than those preceding it. Those nights had possessed a terrible fugue-like quality. True enough, catastrophe, quite possibly apocalypse, had visited the world so what would you expect. Normality? It was hard to come to terms with. Putting it mildly. Too big a concept to really grasp.
Catastrophe has come a callin’ and seems to have taken a shine to the place honeychild. Looks like he might stay over a while.
That voice seemed to be often with her now. That jokily wise, beautifully indulgent voice. She hoped it didn’t ever leave. It was all she had left.
The collapse was a concept that was difficult to grasp, but her mother being gone was somehow worse, harder still to come to terms with. Whilst the collapse was an unbelievable event, danger bundled on top of strange, her mother being dead bordered on the impossible.
Better gone than twisted into badness, never forget that child. If God’s looking down at this nasty mess, well, I don’t know what he’s thinking. Better I’m at his side, ignored in the throng, than the object of his dismay.
Adalia understood challenge. Her life was a continual challenge, but challenge had the habit of becoming ordinary, familiar. Even when it contained unpredictable elements.
Nothing was familiar anymore. The place, the people, the surreal situation. Her mother’s voice whispered in her head, but her mother was gone.
Bizarre and awful as it was, being at this office with monsters at the door and strangers at her elbow was more attractive than trying to sleep in her childhood bed with her mother lying dead in the next room.
Not that she was doing very well at sleeping here.
They’d returned to their nest on the sixth floor with the newcomer. Dragged and arranged sofas and chairs together to form bedding. Ranj hefted and sweated and then went back down to the foyer to help the other man, Attis, with the injured woman. There hadn’t been a great deal of conversation after that.
Caroline seemed to have withdrawn into herself and Adalia had no desire to jaw with the new guy. Not right now anyway. She wasn’t sure about him for one thing. Whereas Ranj struck her as kind and a bit geeky, this guy, well, he didn’t seem to have a whole lot of kindness in him.
She didn’t know what it was exactly. Intuition maybe, if you believed in that shit, and she wasn’t sure she did. Maybe the way he’d spoken about the poor old woman.
All not my problem and I’m not about to make it my problem. Like he couldn’t care less whether the old lady lay bleeding in the hallway or bleeding out there on the cold street.
Old lady can bleed wherever she happens to be bleeding and just get on with it, my nose isn’t losing any skin.
Either way, Adalia got the impression that Philip Sault was jogging on and he wasn’t gonna be looking back.
Not that he had any cause to care about the old woman. He didn’t know her, so why should he? But Adalia didn’t know any of them, yet she’d wanted to help when she saw them out there, vulnerable and exposed.
Caroline hadn’t known her and she still saved Adalia’s life. Still took a risk and put herself in danger when she didn’t need to. Adalia wasn’t sure what it was about Sault, and maybe it was nothing, but she didn’t feel like trying to get to know him. Not right now, thanks all the same. At the back of her mind, there was something about Sault that held echoes of Kalvin and his pal, who turned out to be a pretty dispensable pal, Scozzy.
After a while, she gave up trying to sleep and sat on the balcony.
Watching.
They were moving down there.
Not packs. Not big groups of them. Ones and twos. She tried to be as still as possible at the rail, she wasn’t sure how well they could see in the dark.
To her left, the towering skeleton of the hotel cast a baleful light. Sputtering and flickering, glowing with internal heat, a giant abstract Halloween lantern. She didn’t know about ghosts, but there were plenty of ghouls out tonight. And she didn’t think you could buy these scary kids off with a bar of Cadbury’s or a couple of bags of Haribo.
She shivered, unseasonably warm as the day had been, the night had cooled. Not just that though. Seeing those things prowling in the dark caused her breath to hitch and sent ripples of disgust down her spine.
Like animals out hunting. Not like people at all. A million miles away from people. A different species. She wasn’t sure what she doing out there, but it wasn’t getting her closer to sleep. She went back inside.
Two in the morning if the wall clock was correct. The new guy appeared to be asleep but Caroline lifted a hand in the gloom.
Adalia tip-toed over to her.
“You okay?”
She thought Caroline might have smiled.
“Can’t sleep. Foot’s hurting and my shoulder is aching, feel like I got kicked by a horse. Never been kicked by a horse but it’s how it feels. Oh ...fuck, just ...all of this, you know.”
A tired voice. Adalia felt that tiredness.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Just relax, we’re okay for now. I can’t sleep either. I’m gonna go downstairs and see if Ranj is okay. See if they need anything.”
Caroline only nodded in acknowledgement.
Adalia made her way over to the stairwell doors. They’d left these and the ground floor doors unlocked. The stairway was dark. There was only one emergency light working. Lower, closer to where she was standing than the bottom, around the fourth floor. Below that, the rest were out. Whatever powered them, she guessed it wouldn’t be too long before they all went out.
Be careful going down there honeychild. It’s dangerous in a dark place that you don’t know. Might be better cu
rling up by that nice young woman, the one who plucked you off the street, and waiting for the morning.
What was she doing?
Adalia didn’t really know.
She didn’t want to feel her way down those stairs, blindly groping around in the dark, but she was beginning to feel half crazy. Lying on an uncomfortable couch, with those self-same, half-crazy thoughts spinning round her head like dirty laundry in an old washer, was liable to drive her completely batshit.
She forced hers legs forward and slowly descended. It was a relief to get to the relative brightness of the fourth floor landing. After that, the illumination faded into an inky pit. It might have gone on forever. A bottomless hole. Endless.
Two flights later and she was moving by touch alone. Grasping the handrail so tightly that her knuckles ached. Nervously sliding her feet over each step. It had been dark when they came up but not this pitch blackness. A little light had spilled from the door being held open at the bottom of the stairs. And she hadn’t been alone.
Now she couldn’t see the hand in front of her face. She didn’t remember ever being afraid of the dark in the past, but now, here in this echoing darkness, the fear began to mount.
What the fuck was she doing? There were dead people in this building. Ranj had warned her not to go into the dining room and she’d followed his advice. It didn’t stop her imagining the scene.
A mess, he’d said. And what did that mean if you were talking about these monsters attacking people? He didn’t seem like the type of person to exaggerate. The opposite, he was one of those peoples that underplayed stuff. A nice guy.
She let go of the railing and felt in her pockets. The oily cold of the gun in one and the rubbery-plastic texture of the walkie talkie in the other. She pulled the radio out and considered calling Ranj. It might disturb Caroline and the new guy, they were all on the same channel, she’d seen the blink of the light on Caroline’s walkie-talkie.
There was a crash somewhere and, as she smothered a shriek of surprise, the radio went flying from her hand.
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