The Stolen Days of John Mann

by Charles Barrow

  She heard the door in the lab beyond open, and Private Williams call out, ‘Doctor, the jeep is ready to leave.’

  Russell stood and crossed to the light switch. She took one last look around the room, and wondered if she should turn down the sheets but then decided that was too much. He was a grown man he could do that for himself. She thought of all the nights she had sat in the darkened lab watching John through the glass as he’d slept in this bed. She’d kept him safe in here, he wouldn’t see it that way but she had.

  She switched off the light and left, closing the door to the glass tank behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Flames were belching out of Treader’s building. Mann had seen the blaze from half a mile away and had run the last distance to stand helplessly beside a gaggle of onlookers watching the building burn. The place was an inferno from the ground up to the fifth floor. Mann could smell fuel on the smoke. This was the work of a fire-starter. The heat from the flames was hellish even at some distance, there was no chance anyone could get in, or out, alive, and Mann hoped Treader and his boy hadn’t been trapped inside. He strained to catch sight of the sixth floor balcony through the billowing smoke and for a brief moment thought he saw a dark figure and movement up there, but perhaps it was a trick of the shadows. Gunnar caught up to Mann just as he’d turned away from the building.

  ‘No accident.’ Said Gunnar, sniffing the air.

  ‘Chenko.’ Said Mann, and cursed. He had hoped to ask Treader to cancel the message to Keen about the rendezvous, if indeed it had been sent, and to tell her instead that he was heading east on David’s trail. He had no choice now but to make that rendezvous, though it wouldn’t take him and Gunnar too far off their road.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mann stood beside the water trough in the white dawn light, the green water was frozen an inch thick and frost rimed the grass and sedges in the fields around him. A Rook wheeled overhead, annoyed by his presence in the landscape, it settled in the black skeletal branches of the line of trees nearby. Gunnar sat hunched on the ground resting against the trunk of one of those trees, perhaps dozing, perhaps keeping watch through sly eyes, Mann couldn’t tell.

  A sudden flight of birds farther off claimed Mann’s attention. Keen and Amir must have scattered them. He began to advance slowly across the frozen ground to meet them, the brittle grass crunching beneath his feet.

  The viaduct, arching gracefully over the fields had been the rendezvous point for his and Keen’s first exit from Brighton all those years before. Mann loved its black-brick immensity, it recalled the Abbey in some ways, wonders of the recent world both, marking the vaulting ambition of humans. The viaduct represented freedom of a kind too, a track from here to there, from a bad time in his life to a better one. On a return visit once he had seen a steam train, a rare and marvellous sight in itself, a food transport he supposed, thundering down the line overhead on its way to the coast. He’d promised himself one day to ride that train.

  He scanned the field ahead and saw four darkly swathed figures walking towards him so he stopped abruptly. Not Keen and Amir then, perhaps the message hadn’t reached them after all. They wore identical face-masks, the lenses winking silver in the dawn light, and this alone told him they came organised, probably military. He turned to alert Gunnar but Gunnar had vanished amongst the trees. He turned his attention again to the advancing group and the figure at their centre drew his eye. This one cut a different dash, well wrapped and masked though she was he recognized her immediately, would know her anywhere. As the group drew closer he could see that the other three were armed. His hackles rose and he drew a lungful of air to calm himself, expelling it in a great plume of vapour, before resuming a slow, measured pace towards them.

  ‘John.’ Russell said softly when Mann stopped a short distance from her. ‘John, you’ve grown, you’re a man now, look at you.’ She seemed somehow proud of his achievement. He knew she had pictured him still as the youth she had last known. The image he’d held of her was really no different to the person standing before him, though perhaps her back wasn’t as straight, her shoulders not as square. He quickly assessed the soldiers for threat. All three carried guns but only the female amongst them also carried intent. He returned his attention to Russell.

  ‘I worried I wouldn’t recognise you, but I’d know you anywhere. You live your life as a preacher now?’ She said and her intimate tone was unsettling, she was playing this like a reunion between mother and son, long parted. He hadn’t known what to expect, but this was strange. He had thought to despise her on sight but he felt empty. ‘No word of greeting John?’ She continued.

  His throat was dry and he had trouble forming words, ‘How is it you are here?’

  ‘It’s been a long road, down the years.’

  ‘I meant how did you know I’d be here today?’

  One of the soldiers spoke, ‘Your movements are no longer secret.’

  Russell turned in annoyance to the man, ‘Silence Tate.’

  Mann’s mind raced, had Treader turned his coat at the last?

  Russell spoke again, ‘We have a lot to catch up on John.’

  He frowned at her in irritation, ‘You came here to gossip on old times? Did you think to bring hot tea and cake that we might picnic?’

  ‘I came to ask you to return with me John.’

  Mann coughed out a bark of laughter ‘The years have been really unkind if you still believe that you and I share a destiny.’

  ‘Well, there is my work of course, and your responsibility…’

  ‘Don’t drip that poison into my ear,’ Mann said in a low voice, ‘you murdered my family off me.’ He felt a welcome flush of heat beneath the webbing undershirt and took two paces forward. Russell retreated by the same measure and the soldiers levelled their guns at him. He stood his ground. ‘You mean to finish me here? How would that forward your dream Doctor?’ He spat the last word with all the venom he could muster.

  The barb hit its mark. ‘I worked night and day to find a cure, that is all. I made hard choices…’

  ‘Hard on who?’

  ‘They were hard choices for me. You think I’m a monster? You think I enjoyed keeping you locked in the tank? I believed, I still believe that a cure is worth any price, your family’s lives, your life, mine.’

  ‘Yours?’ Mann hawked a gob of spit at Russell and the female soldier’s gun spat a dart in reply. It thudded into Mann’s shoulder just as a knife whistled past him through the air and buried itself in the soldier’s throat. She hit the ground with a soft thump.

  Mann masked his shock but Russell and both her men cried out and fell to their haunches, scouring the stand of trees where the knife had come from. The men gripped their guns tightly, the one called Tate now drew slightly shy of his mate, Mann noticed, and the other looked ready for flight. Russell dragged her eyes away from the trees and glared at him but with less confidence than before. He needed to press his small advantage while they were off balance.

  He pulled the dart free of his shoulder and tossed it aside. ‘My hide is thicker now than before,’ he said, ‘and I want some answers.’

  ‘You are not in a position to make demands.’ She said.

  He waved his arm in the direction of the trees, ‘I could order you finished here.’

  ‘Do that,’ she said, ‘and someone else will come in my stead, and someone else after him. You are too valuable to be let alone John.’

  ‘Then we knock heads for nothing. Beyond the pleasure it would give there is no point in ending you, you would never end me, and I would end myself before living in your tank again.’

  ‘We must have a vaccine John, everything leads to that and follows from it.’

  ‘You continue to push for a vaccine, woman,’ Mann said, ‘and more die in the pursuit than are saved.’

  ‘A world without a serum is a world without hope.’ She replied.

  He shrugged off her words. ‘I said I wanted answers.’

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nbsp; ‘I have answers for you.’ Tate took a step towards him and turned to face Russell and the other soldier. Is he choosing his side? Wondered Mann. Tate removed his mask.

  ‘Get back in line soldier.’ Russell shouted.

  Tate looked at her with contempt, ‘Go choke.’ He said and turned to Mann. ‘There have been two unscrambled messages, detailing your movements, the first one came into the Facility where I traded its contents for a place inside this bitch’s team.’ Tate waved a dismissive hand in Russell’s direction and she bristled.

  ‘Evans.’ Russell shouted. ‘Put a bullet through that boy’s head.’

  Mann looked on as Russell pushed her livid face close to Evans’s, which was as pale as hers was crimson. ‘That’s an order Private.’ She screamed.

  Mann saw the confusion and fear in the young soldier. ‘Evans,’ Mann said, keeping his voice low but firm so there could be no mistaking its message. ‘Take your gun and leave this place. If you listen to her, if you stay here she will get you killed.’ Evans looked fearfully at him, down at the dead body of Williams and finally back at Russell’s twisted face, then he turned and raced away at a sprint with Russell’s curses yapping at his heels. She rounded on Mann and opened her mouth to speak just as Gunnar broke his cover and jogged over towards them.

  ‘We made a friend?’ Gunnar said, indicating Tate, as he bent to remove his knife from Williams’s neck and wipe it clean of blood on the grass.

  ‘Tate.’ Said Mann.

  ‘I’ve been working on the inside for a year.’ Said Tate, ‘Keen knows of me.’

  ‘Who is this slut Keen?’ Russell growled.

  ‘Have a care woman.’ Mann said with menace.

  Gunnar waved his knife at Russell and spoke to Mann, ‘Shall I take her ears?’

  Mann shrugged, ‘If she speaks again.’ He turned to Tate, ‘Two messages?’

  ‘The first was bounced out carelessly, and I believe others caught it too. It’s when the talk of Cobra began in Brighton, and how I believe Chenko tracked you.’

  Mann looked to Gunnar, who replied, ‘He has a set.’

  ‘Then last night,’ Tate continued, ‘a second message, more narrowly focussed to us, revealing you’d be here. Evans caught that one, which is how we’re here.’

  ‘Treader.’ Mann said.

  Tate paused for a moment as if deciding whether to proceed, and then fetched a folded piece of paper from his inside pocket. ‘There is this too Sir.’ He offered the paper to Mann, who reached slowly to take it from him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Another means to trap you.’

  As Mann lifted the paper from Tate’s fingers the sharp crack of a pistol shot echoed from behind him and Tate staggered backwards, Mann caught him as he fell and lowered him gently to the ground, while Gunnar swung about, slapped the smoking pistol from Russell’s hand and put his knife to her throat.

  Mann lifted his gaze from the dark wound in Tate’s chest to his pale face. ‘Did she end me?’ Tate hissed through clenched teeth, as fear burned in his eyes.

  ‘It’s a flesh wound.’ Mann said, ‘Lucky for you Gunnar here is a surgeon. He’ll stitch you up good as new.’

  Tate smiled at the lie then coughed out a gout of blood. Mann wiped it away with his cuff. A spasm ran through the soldier and he suddenly fixed Mann with an urgent stare as he fought to speak, ‘You’ve been gulled Sir.’

  ‘How?’

  All Tate could manage now was a whisper and Mann had to put his ear close to hear what he said. An icy chill gripped him as Tate shuddered and died in his arms. He lowered the dead soldier to the ground and stood up. He unfolded the piece of paper Tate had handed him, crumpled and blood specked now. He studied it for a moment before refolding it and placing it in his pocket.

  He turned to Gunnar and Russell, ‘Release her.’ He growled. Gunnar relinquished his hold on Russell and stepped away from her even as Mann covered the ground towards her in two strides. She hardly had time to react before his balled up fist smashed into her chin and sent her sprawling.

  Gunnar made to speak but Mann stopped him with a raised hand, ‘Return to the car, this will be the work of moments.’ Gunnar seemed unsure but the cold look on Mann’s face was all the urging he needed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  John Mann sat beside the inert body of Doctor Russell. He recalled what she had said about a world without hope and thought about all those who had peopled the Earth before, wondered at what hopes they had stored up to shield themselves against bitter times. It seemed to him that no matter how small a hope it was the fact of its being that mattered. It gave meaning to life, a reason to walk out into the world.

  Russell stirred beside him, groaning as she rolled her head. Her eyes flew open as awareness returned and she stiffened when she saw him so close.

  He leaned over and held her shoulders to the ground as he dribbled a string of drool onto her face-mask. ‘Do I have your attention Doctor?’ he whispered. She nodded gingerly. He stood and watched her wipe carefully at the infected pool of spit with her sleeve, and then struggle to her feet. He turned and surveyed the bodies of Tate and Williams. ‘Look at what we do Doctor, look at what happens around us. I was a farm boy of 18 when you stole my youth and turned me into a killer. And you ended Tate without blinking.’

  ‘People like Tate don’t matter in the scheme of things.’

  ‘People like Tate are the scheme of things. That’s what you’ve never understood.’

  She pulled herself to her feet, and adjusted her tone, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way John.’

  ‘It will always be this way with you Doctor.’ He turned to face her. ‘All my wits say I should end you here, end our story, avenge my family.’ He spoke quietly for he wanted her to hear no tremor in his voice. ‘I’m tired of living with your shadow clipped to my heels.’

  She said nothing for moments, and then she reached up and slowly removed her mask, revealing the face he hadn’t seen for a decade, but remembered better than his own mother’s. There was a dark smudge of a bruise forming on her jaw where he’d hit her. But there was also a familiar fire in her eyes that had always unnerved him.

  ’My task was to save lives’. She said, ‘I thought if I could save even one life, then we wouldn’t have lost everyone for nothing, and I wouldn’t be...’ she faltered for a moment, ‘I lost family too John, I lost…’ She stopped again and bit at her lip to stop it trembling, ‘I kept you in the tank to keep you safe from the world outside. I would use you for good but there are those out there, closing in, who would use you for ill. John we could be one mutation away from extinction, don’t you care?’

  ‘Maybe the choke was sent to end us. Maybe it’s time for us to let go.’

  Russell laughed without warmth, ‘You wear that collar and yet you would help save none of us?’

  ‘I wear this collar because I know that I am not the Saviour and it is not for me to decide who will live and who will perish. Unlike you Doctor.’

  The heat returned to her eyes. ‘Let us work together John. There have been advances, I myself have had new ideas.’

  ‘I cannot save the world, I know you think I should try but it’s not my path.’

  Her impatience showed in the twitch of an eyelid, a tic he remembered well.

  ‘John, I’ve never had the chance to say how sorry I am that….’

  ‘No.’ he shouted over her. ‘Don’t you dare offer up a hollow apology as your last throw.'

  She looked defiant and his temper broke. He took her by the shoulders and shook her hard. She raised her arms to protect herself and he saw the watch on her wrist. He stared at it for moments and then released her, roughly.

  She rubbed at her shoulders, ‘I found it in your room after you’d gone. I’ve been keeping it for you John.’ A sharp needle of pity lanced his heart. ‘Here.’ she said, unstrapping the watch and pressing it on him.

  ‘You’ve slipped into delusion old woman. You think of me somehow as your own and I�
�m not, I never was.’

  ‘We are shackled together.’ She said.

  ‘Then break the chain.’ He said and dropped the watch and ground it into the hard earth with his boot. She brought her hand to her mouth in shock, as if this was the most barbaric thing she had seen here this day.

  He looked at her with bafflement, ‘My heart was so brimful of hate for you for so long that it almost drowned everything else and I lived a half-life without purpose. I reckoned to meet you again as a ghost bringing vengeance, like some angel of death. But here in this frozen field, now, I realise that if I end you I’ll never be free of you, or whole. I’ll never escape your glass tank Doctor. You walk away from here today because I have found purpose in the world. There is a boy who needs me, and there is someone else who replaced all the hate in my heart, something even God couldn’t do, and I’ll strive ‘til the end of my days to be worthy of that gift.’