The 13th Horseman

by Barry Hutchison

  “So what does that mean?” Drake asked.

  “The challenge is void. You get an automatic pass.”

  “Oh, right.” Drake thought about this. “Good.”

  “Yay!” said Pest, shuffling a deck of very small cards with the flair of a Vegas dealer.

  Something had been bothering Drake all the way back from the Junk Room. He decided to voice it. “The Deathblade Guardian. Or... whatever it was. It was a robot,” he said. “Like those ball things at the school. They were... What did you call it again? Techno-mystical...?”

  “Techno-magic mumbo jumbo,” said War quietly.

  “That’s it. Techno-magic mumbo jumbo. Do you think the same person made both of them?”

  “Oh, yes,” Pest said. He cut the deck, then expertly furrowed the cards back together. “It’ll be the old Death. He was right into all his techno-magic mumbo jumbo. I expect he’s trying to kill you.”

  Drake was taken aback by the matter-of-fact tone of that last statement. “Why would he be trying to kill me?”

  Pest shrugged. “Jealousy, I’d imagine.”

  “But he quit! It wasn’t my fault!”

  Famine shook his head. The movement made his whole upper body wobble like half-set jelly. “No, he went mental, remember? Flipped his lid. No saying what he’s capable of now.”

  Drake blinked. “Oh, well, thanks for that. That’s really reassured me, that has.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” War said. “Sit down, we can talk about it while we play.”

  Drake hesitated, then lowered himself on to the seat across from War. They both had a Guess Who? board in front of them.

  “We’ll do it in rounds,” Pest explained. “The winner of you two plays the winner of me and Famine.” He fanned the cards and held them out. Drake took one and propped it up in a slot on the board.

  For the first time, he looked properly at the little cartoon faces lined up before him. He’d played this game before, but it hadn’t looked like this. He read the characters’ names aloud.

  “Abraham, Jacob, Joseph... What’s all this?”

  “It’s the Bible version,” War explained, as he took a card from Pest. He looked at it impassively, then placed it on his board. “I’ll start.”

  “New boy should go first,” Famine said. “Only fair.”

  “That’s true,” Pest agreed.

  “Oh, all right,” War scowled. “Get on with it, then.”

  Drake looked down at the board. He blew out his cheeks. The problem was, most of them looked pretty similar. Near identical, in fact. He decided to take a wild stab. “Do they have a beard?”

  War clicked his tongue against his front teeth and leaned back in his chair. “No,” he said quietly.

  Drake looked at his board. Then he flipped down every face but one. “Is it the Virgin Mary?”

  “Yes,” War sighed. He held the card up for the others to see, then threw it down on the table. “Stupid bloody game, anyway.”

  “Well done, Drake,” Pest beamed, as he took back the cards and set the boards up for himself and Famine to play.

  “So...” began Drake, looking across at War. “So what?”

  “The old Death. You said we’d talk about him.”

  War crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, if he’s trying to kill me, I want to know everything,” Drake replied.

  “He was here for a thousand years. Everything might take a while.”

  “Well, I never liked him, I don’t mind telling you,” Pest offered. He was staring intently at his board. “Right, then,” he said, eyeballing Famine. “Did he lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

  Famine shook his head. “Nope.”

  Pest flipped down the cartoon Moses. “Your turn.”

  “Why didn’t you like him?” Drake asked.

  “He just never really fitted in,” Pest shrugged. “You’d never catch him doing this, for example.”

  “Did he beget Isaac?” Famine asked.

  “It’s not Abraham, no,” Pest said. He turned to Drake. “He was more into tinkering with his gadgets. Little robotic creations and what not, like them metal balls and the guardian thing. It was like he preferred their company to ours.”

  “Really?” asked Drake, trying not to sound sarcastic.

  “He was obsessed with the Apocalypse too,” Famine added.

  Drake frowned. “Aren’t you all, though? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of you being here?”

  “Oh, I mean we’re all interested in the Apocalypse,” Famine said. “We’re all interested in it, yeah, but he was over the top, he was.”

  “Was he beheaded?” Pest asked.

  Famine blinked. “What, Death?”

  “No, the person on your card.”

  Famine looked down at the board, as if suddenly remembering it was there. “Oh. No,” he said. There were a couple of clacks as Pest flipped down two more faces.

  “I don’t understand. In what way was he obsessed?” Drake asked.

  “He just banged on about it a lot,” War said. “Always wondering what it was going to be like, always complaining that it was taking too long. He just wanted it to hurry up.”

  “And the longer he waited, the worse he got,” Pest added. “On and on he went. On and on.”

  “Don’t you all want it to hurry up, though?” Drake asked.

  For a fraction of a second, War said nothing. “Well, aye,” he nodded. “Course we do, but the difference is, we don’t keep harping on about it.”

  “Did he beget Achaz?” asked Famine.

  “Don’t just ask if they begot someone,” Pest said. “That makes it boring. Think of other questions.”

  “All right, all right,” Famine grumbled. He looked long and hard at the board in front of him. In the silence of the shed, Drake could almost hear the horseman’s brain working.

  “Right,” Famine said, at last. “Was he the father of Achaz?”

  Pest sighed. “No.”

  Famine nodded. “Right.” His eyes went across the faces on his board. “Who was the father of Achaz again?”

  “So, that’s why he left?” Drake asked, ignoring the ensuing bickering between Pestilence and Famine. “He didn’t want to wait any more.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” War said. “He said he was going off to make it happen. Said it was his responsibility to make sure it happened.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “‘Good riddance, ya nutter.’”

  Pest and Famine were still arguing. Drake raised his voice to be heard over them. “And what do you think? Can he actually do it?”

  War took a moment to consider this. “He’s human now, so probably not.”

  Drake hadn’t realised until that moment that he had been tense, but now he felt himself relax a little. “Right,” he said. “That’s good to know.”

  “Although,” War said, “if he put things in place before he left, if he had a plan – and God knows, he had enough time to come up with one – then... aye. Maybe he could.”

  The relief that had washed over Drake drained slowly away. “He could really end the world?”

  War nodded gravely. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “And what if he tries to kill me again? What if he sends more robot things?”

  “We’ll keep our eyes open,” War said, but the way he shrugged didn’t do much to put Drake at ease.

  “Right, I give up,” Pest announced in a voice filled with shrill annoyance. “I had Saint James the Lesser, OK? Happy now?” He held up a picture of a bearded man, then stuffed it back into the pack. “Drake, you’re playing him,” he said, glaring at Famine. “Good luck, it’s like beating your head against a brick wall.”

  Drake stood up. “No, I can’t hang about,” he said. “I need to get home.”

  War frowned. Pestilence stopped shuffling. Famine took a bite from a Victoria Sponge.

  “Home?” War said.

>   “Yeah, I don’t want to be too late – my mum will get worried,” Drake told them.

  Pest cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything. War’s leather armour creaked as he leaned back in his chair.

  “You are home, boy,” he said. “Your old life – you have to leave that behind. You are no longer Drake Finn, you are the Fourth Horseman. You are the rider on the pale horse. You are Death.”

  “For the next ninety days,” Drake reminded him. “After that, I quit, remember? So, in the meantime, I’m going home, OK?”

  None of the horsemen moved to stop him, so Drake left the shed and pulled the door firmly closed behind him.

  A few seconds later, the door opened again. “I’ll see you tomorrow after school,” he said, then he clicked the door closed for a second time, and slipped off into the high grass.

  Next morning, Drake walked down the front path, swallowing the last bite of his breakfast. He swung the gate open and strode out, then almost tripped over someone sitting on the pavement.

  “Hi. Didn’t expect to see you here,” said Mel. Her back was leaning against the fence, her legs straight out in front of her, feet together.

  Drake’s mind raced. His mouth dropped open.

  “Now you’re supposed to say, ‘What, exiting my front garden just before school time?’,” Mel prompted.

  The vaguely awkward school-gates conversation from yesterday replayed in his head. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “What are the chances?”

  Mel popped to her feet and brushed some little stones and muck from the back of her skirt. “Mind if I walk you to school?” she asked. “You can say no if you want, but I’ll just follow you anyway, shouting abuse.” She put a hand to the side of her mouth. “ABUSE ! ” she cried. “See, like that?”

  “OK, yeah, that’d be great,” Drake said. He began walking, and Mel followed along. “How do you know where I live?” he asked.

  Mel shrugged. “I have my sources. But the reason I came – I remembered what I was meant to tell you yesterday.”

  “Oh, right,” said Drake. “What was it?”

  “Dr Black.”

  “Dr Black?”

  “Dr Black,” Mel repeated. “He came to Mr Franks’s class yesterday after you’d left, pretending to be all worried about you.”

  “How do you know he was pretending?” Drake asked.

  “Because he doesn’t worry about anyone,” Mel said. “So, straight away my suspicions are aroused, I’m like, ‘Dr Black, worried about someone? No chance.’”

  “Right,” said Drake, a little uncertainly. “Was that it?”

  “You think I’d walk all the way over here just to tell you that?” Mel scoffed.

  “What, then?”

  “He started accusing you of stuff. Well, not exactly accusing, but pointing the finger of suspicion, let’s say.” She prodded him in the chest. “At you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That you were the last one to see the missing kids.”

  A frown creased Drake’s forehead. “Well, he’s lying, I don’t even know who they are.”

  “He said something about... outside the toilets?”

  Drake felt his stomach tighten. He stopped walking. “Wait, they’re not those three little spotty guys, are they?”

  “Yeah, that’s them. So... what? You were the last to see them?”

  “Yeah,” said Drake absent-mindedly. “I mean, no, no, I wasn’t. He was. He took them away after that. I saw him taking them through a door in his classroom.”

  “So then he was lying,” Mel realised. “Why would he be lying?”

  “I don’t know,” Drake said. He thought about the floating sphere, and about the fact it had come from within the history teacher’s classroom. “But I think we’d better try to find out.”

  HE CASTS HIS wretched gaze across the sands that stretch into infinity on all sides of him. The whirlpools of his eyes tilt down, down, before finally coming to rest on a rectangular indent on the desert floor. Somewhere, far off to his left, a purely vocal arrangement of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust drifts across the plains.

  He turns, once more, and slips through the barrier between that dimension and the next.

  Again.

  WHEN THE BELL rang for morning break, they both knew what they had to do.

  Drake had practised the route in his head all morning so he wouldn’t waste time finding his way. Even so, Mel made it to Dr Black’s room before he did. She was standing by the door, keeping guard, when Drake finally came clattering along the corridor.

  “He’s out on patrol,” Mel told him. “He does it every break and lunchtime, just strides around scowling at everyone. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “That should be enough,” Drake said. He grasped the door handle, then paused, feeling his heart pick up the pace. The last time he had opened this door he had almost been killed. But Mel was already nudging him, and his hand was already turning the handle.

  The door creaked open, revealing a room devoid of any mechanical monsters. Drake let out a shaky breath as Mel brushed past him into the classroom.

  “So, what are we looking for, exactly?” she asked, as she slid open a drawer on the teacher’s desk.

  Drake didn’t quite know what to say to that. There had been no need to explain anything to Mel when he asked her to help him sneak into Dr Black’s room. She had agreed without asking any questions, and had seemed genuinely excited by the idea. Now, though, even she was starting to look a little apprehensive.

  “I don’t know,” Drake admitted. “But three dead bodies, maybe.”

  Mel stopped. She slid the drawer closed. “Doubt they’ll be in there, then.”

  “That’s the door they went in,” Drake said. Mel followed his gaze.

  “That’s just a cupboard,” she said. “Why would he put them in a cupboard?”

  “Not for anything good,” Drake guessed.

  Mel crept past him until she reached the cupboard door. She looked round the edges, where the door met the frame, as if checking for booby traps. Finally, she placed her hand on the handle.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Drake swallowed. He felt more nervous at that moment than he had in the cave back in Limbo. “Ready.”

  “Here goes,” Mel said. She held her breath as she pushed down the handle. The door didn’t open. “Well, that’s disappointing,” she sighed, letting the breath out. She crouched down and studied the keyhole directly below the handle, then put one eye to it. There was only darkness on the other side. “What do we do now?”

  Drake joined her at the door. He pressed his ear to the wood, and rapped on it three times. “Hello?” he said.

  “Hello,” came a reply, but it hadn’t come from inside the cupboard. “Can I help you, children?” asked Dr Black. He spat the last word out, as if it left a sour taste in his mouth.

  “Hi, Dr Black,” said Mel, smiling innocently. Her lips were moving before Drake’s brain had even realised the need for an excuse. “Drake and I were having an argument about the Second World War. I say D-Day came before V-Day, but he says V-Day came first. I know, he’s an idiot, right? Anyway, we thought, who better to help settle—”

  “Silence,” Dr Black said.

  “To help settle the argument than Dr Black, the most informed history teacher in the whole—”

  Dr Black’s voice made the windows rattle in their frames. “I said be quiet !”

  Mel stopped talking. The teacher glared at her for several seconds, the air whistling in and out of his hooked nose as he breathed. When he was certain she wasn’t about to start babbling again, he turned his gaze on the boy beside her.

  “What are you doing in my room?” he asked. His voice was low and controlled, but menacing enough that anyone hearing it would be in no doubt that it could become very loud again, very quickly.

  “We were just looking around,” Drake said. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mel wince. But he wasn’t trying to make excuses. He want
ed the truth. Drake drew himself up to his full height. “We were looking for the kids who went missing. I saw them go into your cupboard.”

  Dr Black’s expression did not change. “Did you, indeed?”

  “And you were there,” Drake continued. “I saw you,” he said, although he realised that this wasn’t strictly true.

  “And so you suspect I had something to do with their disappearance,” Dr Black said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “And who else have you spoken to about this?”

  “No one,” Drake said. A nagging doubt told him this was the wrong thing to say. The feeling was confirmed when a relieved smile spread across Dr Black’s face.

  “Lucky for me, then. I dread to think what such wild accusations could do to my reputation, were they to spread to the populace at large.”

  He looked from Drake to Mel and back again, as if deciding what to do with them. At last, he turned and strode across to the window. “With me, Mr Finn.”

  Drake hesitated. The classroom door was open. They could make a break for it while the teacher’s back was turned. But then what? They’d know nothing more than they knew already, and then they’d always be running from Dr Black.

  He walked over to the window, with Mel following along behind him.

  “What do you see out there, Mr Finn?” Dr Black asked.

  Drake looked through the grubby glass. The classroom was one storey up, giving it a reasonably good view of the rectangle of concrete that made up the bulk of the school grounds.

  “Kids,” Drake said, looking down at the heads of the children roaming below. “Just kids.”

  “Look closer.” Dr Black tapped a bony finger against the glass. It sounded like he was hitting it with a stone. “Down there.”

  Drake looked in the direction the teacher had indicated.

  “Ah,” said Mel. “That’s cleared that up, then.”

  Three familiar figures leaned against a wall. They were much shorter than the kids around them, but the others were giving them a wide berth, all the same.

  “They turned up this morning,” Dr Black explained. “They had decided to run away, it seems, but quickly changed their minds. Nevertheless, as you can see, Mr Finn, they are very much not in my cupboard.”