Path of the Tiger

by J M Hemmings

  She turned her head to the bedside table, with the hardcover copy of Fritjof Capra’s The Web of Life, inside the cover of which she had hidden the crushed-up Phenergan tablets. With this throttling, claustrophobic sense of despair that blanketed her every sense, she felt like simply dumping the powder into the toilet and flushing it away.

  Or, perhaps, using it on herself.

  Through the hopelessness, however, a stabbing lance of light burst like sudden sunshine through a bank of storm clouds.

  ‘No! No!’ she growled. ‘You can’t give up now! You have to do something to get out of this damn room tonight and get down to the river. There has to be some way to do it. There has to be!’

  She sat up in the bed and slapped her own face. Then she slapped herself again, harder this time, so that the heat of the sting throbbed harshly in her cheeks.

  ‘You’re weak,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Weak, weak, weak and pathetic! Stop it now. Stop it! Stop it! Wake up Margaret! Wake the hell up, you pathetic piece of shit! Ting needs you! The puppies need you! You will, I repeat, you will get the hell out of this shithole tonight!’

  She got up, her jaw set with vicious determination, and then walked over to the window and began to scheme.

  ***

  By nightfall, however, she had come no closer to figuring out an alternative escape plan. She had even gone back inside the secret passage, following it to its terminus, which had turned out to be a dead end, sealed up by a rockfall. Wherever the passage had once led to, it did not matter; the way was blocked. She had tried to move a few of the stones, but they had simply been too large and heavy.

  In the end, despite her intense determination, Margaret had been forced to concede that there was little she could do about her predicament without the help of Sergeant Tesla. She had eventually resigned herself to temporary defeat and had decided to temporarily alleviate her despair by doing what she often did under such circumstances – getting drunk. She had knocked on the door and asked the guard for two bottles of wine, which were duly brought to her.

  ‘Thanks for the wine,’ Margaret said nervously as she took the bottles from the guard. She could feel the girl’s judgmental gaze boring holes into her skull with its accusatory heat. From the way she was staring at the two bottles, they could have been two lumps of putrid, diseased flesh.

  ‘If you need anything else,’ the girl muttered, still staring with disgust at the wine, ‘I’ll be outside.’

  She stepped out and shut the door behind her, and Margaret, almost in tears now, slumped down on the bed. This was it, her only chance to escape trickling through her fingers like so many grains of sand.

  ‘It’s gone. It’s well and truly gone,’ she whispered to herself as the last few drops of the previous day’s optimism fell from her cupped hands and disappeared like water into desert sand. Even the dark dampness of their presence vanished soon enough, leaving behind nothing but crushing despair.

  She had no appetite to speak of, so she pushed her plate of food away – the girl had brought this too, without it being ordered – and moved straight to the wine. She didn’t bother with a glass; instead, she put the first bottle to her lips, sucked back a hefty swig and then wiped off her mouth with the back of her hand. A little wine dribbled down her chin, but she didn’t care. She took a breath and then chugged as much as she could, stopping only when she was out of breath, and then slammed the bottle down on the table with a violence born of acidic frustration, after which she cradled her head in her hands.

  ‘You’ve won, General,’ she muttered sourly. ‘You crazy, murdering, warmongering, psychotic monster, you’ve won. I’m stuck here, at your mercy. Congratulations.’

  She looked up, seeing only a sliver of the outside world through the gap between her palms, pressed as they were over her eyes and face, and noticed that the wine bottle was already half empty.

  ‘Well, there’s a problem I can solve at least,’ she muttered.

  She reached out and snatched at the bottle, almost knocking it over in the process and having to fumble with clumsy fingers to prevent it from falling off the table.

  ‘Damn it! God fucking damn it!’ she suddenly shouted. She had an almost irresistible urge to fling the bottle across the room and see it shatter against the wall where the secret passage was. ‘And what a fat load of good that stupid secret passage did for me,’ she snarled. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere useful! Nothing in this godforsaken place is working for me! Everything is against me, everything!’

  She slugged back another quarter of the bottle, knowing that when the alcohol hit it would hit hard and fast, but she didn’t care. Oblivion was what she sought now, and come hell or high water she would have it.

  It was as she raised the bottle to her lips to finish the final quarter of the bottle that she heard a familiar knock on the door – a knock that caused her heart to leap into her mouth, both with surprise and with elation.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, stunned. ‘Tesla!’

  A flame of hope flared up, burning with welcome brightness against the vast sea of black bleakness in her soul.

  ‘C-, come in! Come on in Tesla,’ she cried out.

  However, as soon as the words had left her lips she realised she had made a terrible mistake; she had not yet prepared the wine for the boy. As if liquid nitrogen had been pumped intravenously into her body, a shock of bitter frigidity iced her entire system.

  ‘No!’ she yelled abruptly when the key started to turn in the lock. ‘Don’t come in yet!’

  She was aware of the tone of harsh hysteria in her voice, but in this moment of panic she was unable to do anything about it.

  ‘Are you okay in there, Doctor?’

  ‘Y-, y-, yes, just, wait! I’m, I’m er, I haven’t got any clothes on, okay?! Wait!’

  ‘That’s fine. Tell me when you’re dressed.’

  There did not seem to be any hint of suspicion in the boy’s voice; Margaret breathed out a protracted sigh of relief. Scrambling with urgent haste, she hurried over to her bedside table and picked up the book with the crushed Phenergan pills. She found herself breathing rapidly and shallowly with fear, and it took all of her powers of concentration to focus on getting the powder into the wine, for her hands were trembling with a new anxiety now; her bold and potentially disastrous plan for escape was about to be put into action.

  After what felt like forever, and a lot of quiet cursing and fumbling, she managed to get most of the powder into the bottle, and what remained in the palm of her hand she wiped off on the side of her combat trousers. She then blocked the opening of the bottle with her thumb and shook it as vigorously as she could, trying to keep the sloshing sound of the liquid to a minimum. When she was satisfied that the powder had dissolved she set the bottle down as carefully as she could on the table and dabbed at her mouth with the corner of her sleeve, trying to neaten herself up and not look as much of a wreck as she felt herself to be.

  ‘All right Tesla, I’m dressed now,’ she announced.

  As Tesla walked in, Margaret made a show of tucking her shirt into her pants, as if she had just pulled them up. The boy seemed convinced; he smiled a warm smile at her and stood with casual nonchalance next to the table.

  ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you at an inopportune moment,’ he said.

  ‘It’s fine!’ she replied, beaming a broad grin at him. ‘I missed you today, you know. I thought you weren’t gonna come.’

  A look of pleasant surprise glowed on the boy’s face.

  ‘You missed me? Really?’

  ‘Of course, kiddo! We’re best buds, remember?’

  Margaret could feel the heat of his joy from where she was standing, as if his cheeks were pouches filled with coals plucked from a still-burning fire. It was obvious that nobody had ever given Tesla a compliment like that before, and it seemed that he had no idea how to react to it.

  ‘I, um, wow Margaret, I, er, I feel special that you said that to me,’ he stammered.

&n
bsp; ‘Think nothing of it, Tesla. I’m just being honest! So, what’s brought you here at this hour?’

  She hoped he could not detect the cracking notes of desperation in her voice, nor see the hint of panicked fear widening her eyes. She did her best to force an attitude of calm nonchalance, hoping the boy would not see through the charade and have his suspicions raised.

  ‘Margaret, do you remember you asked if we could take a walk outside and look at the stars tonight?’ he ventured.

  ‘Oh yeah, I guess I did mention that yesterday huh. I’d kinda forgot, but anyway, what did the General say?’

  Tesla flashed a toothy smile at her.

  ‘He said yes!’

  Tesla was obviously very pleased with himself, and Margaret could not contain the surge of joy that tore through her body and mind with the violence of a typhoon. She sprang to her feet and punched a fist in the air, whooping with triumph as she did. Only after she had done this, though, did she realise how strange it must have seemed. Tesla, however, did not appear to think it at all suspicious, and he clapped his hands together and laughed loudly.

  ‘You are so happy now Margaret! It is good to see you so happy, really, it is very good. I am happy about this too! Very happy! Come, let’s go. I’ve been authorised to take you out until eleven o’clock, so we have almost two hours to walk around.’

  Margaret looked out of the window and saw that the moonless night sky was almost white with a vast spread of stars.

  ‘It’s looking glorious out there!’ she remarked. ‘It’s just perfect.’

  She shot an overtly conspiratorial glance into Tesla’s eyes and winked suggestively.

  ‘Hey, how about before we go we have a few sips of wine?’

  Tesla’s eyes shot over to the bottles of wine and an immediate greed, a lust almost, gleamed in them; he had obviously greatly enjoyed his first taste of the substance the night before … just as Margaret had hoped he would.

  ‘Really? You will give me some? And, er, you won’t say anything, right?’

  ‘My lips are sealed, Tesla! Zipped, locked up with the key thrown down a well. Go on, you have what’s left in this bottle. I’ll open a fresh bottle and we can drink together.’

  She pushed the bottle with the crushed-up Phenergan in it toward Tesla, hoping that he could not pick up on the predatory air in her desperate eyes, nor the barely concealed trembling of her hands.

  ‘Go on now, have a sip,’ she prompted.

  She sat down and slipped her hands under her thighs to hide how much they were shaking. Holding her breath, she stared intently at Tesla as he raised the bottle to his lips and sucked in a mouthful of the sedative-laced wine.

  That’s it. Come on boy, drink it, drink it all up. That’s right, swallow it down, swallow every last goddamned drop of it.

  She had to force herself to look away temporarily, for she thought that the fierce intensity of her gaze would surely arouse suspicion in the boy. It seemed, however, that he was too absorbed in his drink to notice any irregularities in her behaviour, and he kept on drinking from the bottle until he had drained it dry, after which he let out a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘Mm, thank you Margaret!’ he exclaimed. ‘This wine is so nice! It does taste a little different to the bottle we had yesterday—’

  ‘That’s because every bottle is unique,’ Margaret blurted out, her voice somewhat harsh and abrasive, barbed with the serration of fearful urgency.

  ‘I see,’ Tesla said, seemingly oblivious to this strangeness of her tone, ‘and that makes it even more fun to drink!’

  Margaret stood up with clumsy haste, almost knocking the chair over in the process. She was now starting to feel the effects of the three-quarters of the bottle she had just downed, and she was worried that the inebriation brought on by the alcohol would prevent her from pulling off her plan effectively. Things had to be set in motion immediately; there was no time to waste, none whatsoever.

  ‘Come on Tesla,’ she said, painfully aware of how her speech was beginning to slur, ‘let’sh go and make the mosht of thish evening. C’mon, hurry!’

  He sprang up from his chair, quick with innocent enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes, yes, let’s go!’

  They walked at as brisk a pace as Margaret could manage without incurring the suspicions of the various guards they passed, and she did her best to remain calm and collected under the probing gaze of their cold eyes. Once they were out of the palace and in the General’s exquisite garden, Tesla began seeking out a bench amidst the lush foliage.

  ‘We can sit in the garden here and talk about the stars,’ he suggested.

  This, however, was not part of Margaret’s plan.

  ‘No, we can’t sit here, sh-, shilly,’ she countered, hoping that he wouldn’t pick up on the trembling nervousness that seemed to be so blatantly evident in her voice, even through her drunken slurring. ‘With all these trees and plantsh around, we can hardly sh, shee anything of the shky. In fact, because there are sh, sho many treesh in this c-, city, we need to get sh-, shomewhere high, above the treesh, to really sh-, shee the fullness of the night sh, shky.’

  Tesla looked suddenly worried.

  ‘But, I, um, I don’t think the General would be happy if we venture too far from the palace grounds,’ he murmured.

  Margaret stared at him for a moment or two. The skin of his face was reflecting a purple glow from the gently coloured light of the bioluminescent fungi, but above this she noticed that his pupils were beginning to dilate; the combination of alcohol and antihistamines was starting to kick in. They had to move, and they had to move now.

  ‘Oh pooh-pooh to that,’ she retorted. ‘The General shaid we could walk around the city. He didn’t sh, shay where in the city we could and couldn’t go, sho, let’s go. I know exactly where we can sh, shee a great shpread of the night shky.’

  ‘But Margaret—’

  She didn’t care to listen to his response; she had already started walking briskly along the garden path that would take her to the palace gates. Tesla hurried to catch up with her, trailing along like a reluctant child after an impatient and unbending mother.

  Margaret soon reached the gates, emerging clumsily from the thick foliage with a stumble over a loose stone. The guards who were stationed at the gate – which was now closed – seemed very surprised to see her, and they raised their weapons to their shoulders and were about to say something when Tesla rushed out of the garden behind her. He said something to the guards in their language, and while they still seemed suspicious, they nonetheless lowered their weapons, and one of them reluctantly opened the palace gates.

  Once they were outside, Margaret veered immediately to the left. She knew exactly where she needed to be; the only question was whether they would make it there before Tesla collapsed. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was following her. He was, and he caught her gaze for a second and started to say something, but she turned her head away, ignoring him, and steamed on ahead as fast as she could.

  ‘Margaret, wait—’ Tesla, who was beginning to feel the first stirrings of the potent cocktail Margaret had given him, protested.

  ‘Time waitsh for no man, Tesla,’ she countered, huffing and breathing hard from the exertion of her power-walking. ‘Keep up or fall behind, it’sh your choice!’

  She rocketed ahead, almost colliding with two soldiers as she veered at speed around a corner. Their startled eyes almost popped from their skulls at the sight of her, and one reached for her weapon – a nine-millimetre pistol holstered at her hip – but then Tesla came scurrying around the corner as well. As he had before, he explained the situation, and the pair of soldiers let them pass, albeit with looks of suspicion on their faces.

  Tesla was beginning to feel woozy now; his vision was becoming blurred at the edges and it felt as if all of the energy was draining from his body like air from a slow-punctured tyre.

  ‘M-, M-, Margaret,’ he stammered, his voice low and his delivery sluggish, ‘I d-, d-,
don’t feel g-, g-, good, I th-, th- think something is wr-, wrong…’

  ‘Don’t be sh, shilly,’ she snapped in response. ‘Nothing’sh wrong with you. I’m a d-, doctor, and that’sh my professional opinion! You’re f-, fine! Hurry up!’

  ‘I f-, feel—’

  ‘Shut up!’ she snarled, her desperation now as naked as an assassin’s blade flashing in the dark. ‘Just shut up and fucking follow me! Move it!’

  After that Tesla stopped protesting; the venom in Margaret’s voice was apparent, and he was beginning to feel very drowsy now. He had no energy to argue; all he could do at this point was follow Margaret and do as she said. Margaret’s heart was in her mouth, thumping out a doom beat, and her stomach began to churn with a crippling nausea as she reached her destination: the foot of the tall tower that looked out over the river – the tower from which she had seen the teenage soldiers jumping into the water outside the city walls.

  ‘Mother of God,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I’m here. It’s happening, it’s actually happening.’

  Sergeant Tesla came staggering up the path behind her. His dilated pupils were enormous dishes of black in his eyes, and his countenance had taken on an air of haggard exhaustion, like a drunk’s after an all-night binge.

  ‘M-, M-, M-, Margaret,’ he slurred as he swayed like a sapling in a gale on his feet. ‘I f-, f-, feel—’

  ‘Chin up shweetie, you’re fine!’ she said with forced chirpiness. ‘We’re going up to the r-, roof of that tower. Thatsh the best place to shee the sh-, shtars.’

  ‘Mar-, Margaret I c-, c—’

  She spun around and grabbed his slim shoulders and shook him with a desperate violence that she didn’t know she had in her.

  ‘We’re going up to the roof of that tower,’ she hissed, with her jaw set tight and her muscles trembling with barely suppressed savagery. ‘You are fine, do you undershtand me, boy?! There’sh nothing wrong with you. Nothing! Now how the hell do we get up there?! I know there’sh a way! Fucking take me up there, now!’