Hector had seen Silence dragging Callie up the steps to the walkway nearest them straight away. Like Blarney catching the scent outside, Hector had found her screams above the gunshots and his instinct had followed, and now he was closing in. Silence was manoeuvring Callie on, pulling her up and along the walkway, and then ducking out of sight through a small archway between the first two bookshelves on that level. Hector had been sprinting towards the steps when the walls around him suddenly seemed to explode. Machine gun fire was ripping through the air, and then Hector was dropping down and skimming along the smooth marble floor before hitting the bottom step with his knees.
Sam, his senses still falling back in slow motion, took his chance with the shooters below him distracted by each other, and started to run along the top walkway, veering off at the intersection and crossing high above the Party members to the opposite side of the building to Mia and Hector. As he reached the wall he seemed to fall into the nearest bookshelf, the intense pain down his right side throbbing and screaming and pleading with him to stand still and stop moving. The top shelf of books fell onto him and then skittered along the walkway, dropping down onto the Party Plod on the ground floor. A second later his walkway was taking its own hit of machine gun fire, and Sam was hauling himself on as the books around him seemed to disintegrate, and the bookshelf shatter.
Mia had taken cover behind a large semi-circular reception desk. She saw Sam high above on the top walkway, falling into the bookshelf and as the shooters momentarily turned their attention to him she craned around the desk and tried to move into a one handed shot, whilst holding a snarling Blarney back with the other. Her single shot was high and wild and struck the base of the first walkway. The nearest shooter to her turned instinctively and then unleashed a blast of gunfire back in her direction, tearing through the edge of the reception desk. Mia ducked back and dragged Blarney with her, pulling hard on his tail until he yelped. Mia rolled over onto her beloved dog, just as more gunfire tore a jagged slash through the middle of the desk. It was then the gunfire ceased abruptly and a man’s voice suddenly boomed out in its place.
‘Hold your fire! Stop shooting!’ Raizbeck walked between his men and out into the middle of the marble floor. Gently taking a pistol from a holster on his belt he turned back to the shooter nearest Mia and casually shot him through the head. ‘I told you I want her alive.’
Raizbeck gestured one of the remaining shooters to the top level walkway high above them, pointing in the direction of the fallen bookshelf next to Sam, and then brushed a hand at the other and nodded towards Hector on the opposite side of the building, who was now getting to his feet and mounting the steps two at a time. The two shooters moved away to their targets and left Raizbeck alone, staring at the reception desk and the prize that lay beyond.
‘Mia?’ Raizbeck sounded weary, bored by the whole thing. ‘I don’t want to hurt you Mia. You are trapped, right now. I hope you understand that. You come out from behind that desk and turn your gun on me and I will have no choice but to shoot you. But please believe me, that is the last thing I want. I have never wanted to hurt you. I saved you, you probably don’t remember that do you? I found you at Bleeker Hill and carried you out of there. Do you remember that, Mia?’
Mia did. The images, the memories, that place…her mind was starting to mist over again. She was screaming silently at herself, pleading with her wistful imagination not to run wild on her, not at that moment. She felt Blarney shift underneath her, fighting to free himself from her hold so he could launch his own private attack on the owner of that voice, and she nuzzled her face deep into his wiry coat, shaking her head, fighting her own mind.
‘Of course you remember, Mia. You remember me taking you to get your wounds treated. You remember our medic that looked after you. You remember what you did to him, don’t you? We found the medic truck. Found his body. I had to tell his wife what had happened. I so much wanted to be able to tell her why, Mia. Why the daughter of one of The Party’s great sons would do such a thing. Why she would participate in such deeds. Sullivan I can understand. But not you, Mia, not one of our own.’
‘It was…it…’ The words hurt Mia’s throat as she spoke them, they seemed to scream inside her even though she knew they were barely more than a whisper.
‘What’s that?’
‘It was not me. It’s the place. That place. Not me…Not him.’
‘The place?’ Raizbeck wandered over to one of the many small reading tables dotted around the giant marble floor and plucked up a chair. Turning it to the reception desk he took a seat and slowly crossed his legs. ‘Go on. I’m intrigued.’
Mia fell silent again and pulled her arms tighter around Blarney.
Raizbeck took a small walkie-talkie from inside his jacket pocket, thumbed the button and spoke quietly: ‘Everett? Get in here now.’ Raizbeck put the walkie-talkie back in his pocket and straightened his jacket. ‘Mia?’
The scarred letters itched and then flared on her arm and she wanted to dig her fingers under her skin and tear them away. Her mind was racing; thoughts and images that made no sense tumbled from her subconscious and exploded behind her eyes. Underneath her Blarney licked her face frantically and started nibbling at her ears.
6
Sam had hobbled off the top-level walkway and turned into a narrow corridor. He could hear the steady, arrogantly calm footsteps of the shooter getting nearer to him, and he braced himself for another ear-splitting blast of gunfire. Books were stacked high in teetering, clumsily constructed towers on either side of the corridor, the right hand side feeding around into another, even narrower, space. Sam stumbled over his own feet and landed hard on his knees. Once more the side of his body still smarting from the fall pulsed and raged, and at that moment he had little else to give. He got up and pushed on, turned right, and then left, along another path in this literature rabbit warren, and then slowly he crumpled to his knees, succumbing to the screaming of his body. The floor creaked as the footsteps came again, and this time Sam didn’t even attempt to move. As the shooter drew up behind him Sam closed his eyes and gently rested his hands on his head. In the blackness he saw the face of his aunt and her mouth was moving, saying words he couldn’t hear.
‘Please,’ he found himself muttering, ‘please don’t shoot me. I just got trapped here. I didn’t mean to be here. I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t want anything to do with it. Please. Please don’t shoot me!’
There was a deathly silence and then a small, snarling laugh. The man was down on his haunches and breathing stale breath into the side of Sam’s face.
‘Please…’ Sam began again.
‘Shut up. Stop talking.’
‘Okay. Yes, all right…’
The shooter cuffed Sam around the head. ‘I said shut up, boy!’
Sam scrunched his eyes tight shut and as he did the image of his aunt seemed to grow pale and gaunt, and begin to drift away. He could feel the stubble on the man’s face brush against the back of his neck, and then the man was putting his machine gun aside and running his hands around Sam’s shoulders.
‘What’s a boy like you doing out in the big city all by himself? You are by yourself, aren’t you, boy?’
‘I have an aunt. My aunt is…’
‘Not here. This aunt of yours isn’t here, is she? Where is your aunt, boy?’
‘We want to go to The Hill,’ Sam lied. ‘I said I would come into the city and see if…’
‘Don’t bother me what you want to do. Don’t bother me one bit. Boy like you shouldn’t be by yourself in the big city though. Not safe.’ The man’s hands were now moving down Sam’s back, an index finger playing along his spine. ‘Put your hands down, boy.’
Sam let his arms drop to the side, and the man gave another little laugh and then shoved him in the back. ‘Palms flat on the floor. Don’t you get any ideas.’ The man’s hands reached for the nape of Sam’s neck and he lightly pinched the skin.
‘Please don’t h
urt me.’
The man slapped one of Sam’s cheeks playfully. ‘Told you not to speak, didn’t I?’ He grabbed Sam’s hair and then moved his head up and down slowly. ‘Yes Mr, yes you told me not to speak,’ the man said in a mock childish voice before burying his fingers deeper and gripping tighter. ‘Look at me, boy. Look at me!’
The man began to turn Sam’s head to face him and Sam shuffled his body around to join it. His pain was like a raw wound that was being manipulated and probed and it took all he had not to scream as he turned.
‘Look at me.’ The man gripped the side of Sam’s head and let his thumbs move up to his eyes and begin tugging at the eyelids, coaxing them open. ‘Look at me. Look at me…’
Sam opened his eyes and found himself staring at a stout man with a wide, ruddy face and huge frog-like eyes that looked like they were falling out of his skull. Bit by bit those eyes were eating Sam up.
‘So young, boy. You are too young to be out here all alone. What are you, ten? Eleven? Maybe you let me take care of you, yeah?’
Sam jerked his head forward so quickly and brought his forehead down so forcibly, he was sure the man was still smiling as the two ugly spurts of blood shot out from his nostrils and down his face.
‘I’m twelve and a half, you bastard.’
Sam lunged for the machine gun, and swiped it across the man’s dazed looking face before bringing the butt down hard between those two over-inflating eyes.
7
‘Hey you! You on the chair, Mr clean fingernails…let’s see your hands.’ Rage coursing through him, Sam had staggered back onto the walkway and was now turning his attention down to the ground floor and the arrogant man sat stoically on the chair with his legs crossed. ‘There’s a machine gun pointing towards your back. Toss the weapon.’
Raizbeck’s eyes had never left the reception desk, and he wasn’t about to look anywhere else now either. With a long sigh, he took his pistol by the barrel, held it up briefly in front of him and then flung it across the marble floor.
‘Stand up!’
Raizbeck stood slowly, overdramatically, and then held his hands up in mock surrender.
‘You behind the desk, you okay there?’ Sam shouted. ‘Answer me!’
Blarney replied for them both with one deep bark and then a second later he was tearing out around the desk and making a beeline for Raizbeck’s right ankle. Raizbeck barely even noticed him. His focus remained at the desk and now Mia who was standing slowly, her rifle aiming straight at his head. Mia gave one shrill whistle and then Blarney was coming to a skidding halt, slipping and sliding clumsily across the marble floor. Her faithful friend offered one last booming bark of attitude and promise, and skulked back to her side.
‘Hello again, Mia.’ Raizbeck’s voice was low and controlled, betraying no emotion.
‘You’re…Raizbeck?’
‘You okay down there?’ Sam bellowed and then saw Mia flash one quick look in his direction and seemingly do a double take. He’d seen it before. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Yes, you are what?’ Mia shouted back as she moved out from around the desk.
‘A kid. A kid with a machine gun. My aunt calls me a product of my time.’
‘Tell me about it. Got a name, kid?’
‘Sam.’
Mia began to cross the marble floor. ‘Hello Sam. I’m Mia and this is Blarney. What you doing here, Sam?’
‘Just out doing some shopping when these bastards rolled on by.’
Mia’s rifle barrel rested against Raizbeck’s forehead. His eyes were empty but his smile was full.
‘One more, Mia. Are you ready to kill another?’ Raizbeck taunted.
Mia slowly lowered the rifle and moved it down to her side.
‘You got any transport, Sam?’
‘A car a few miles outside the city.’
‘You got anyone with you?’
‘Nope.’
‘Got keys to a truck out the back. You’re welcome to come with us. But I need you to do me a favour, Sam. I’ve got two more people in here with me and I would like you to help me get them out. Will you do that?’
‘Sure.’
‘These people…’ Raizbeck said softly, ‘tell me, I’m curious, do they really think they are safe with you? Do they not know what you are?’
Before she could answer, a bullet exploded through Raizbeck’s left shoulder, the force spinning him around and then pitching him off his feet. A second shot whizzed past them both and hit the reception desk. A third hit Mia in the arm.
Hector Frost was stood on the first walkway, across the library from Sam, his rifle in hand. On Hector’s fourth shot the rifle clicked empty.
8
From the moment Sam had crashed into his life, Jacob Silence’s mind, that brilliant, prowling weapon, had become like a radio auto-tuning itself to a station that wasn’t there. That crystal clear clarity that had been present when he had snuck into the library, crept up on Hector Frost’s sister and held the knife at her throat, was now gone, and he was struggling to remember why he was there at all.
Break the weakest part of the web.
That was what he had thought. Take apart those around his prized target, and then when she is alone…what? I wouldn’t be as frightened of her as I clearly am now?
Why do you fear the girl? What do you see?
Right now that was a question for another time. Silence had more immediate things shouting through the static in his mind…Sam, Sam, Sam…
The boy was across the other side of the library, being chased down by that hideous toad-like creature that had come in with Raizbeck. Perhaps he would take the boy out of the equation. Maybe that name repeating over and over in his mind would soon be redundant…perhaps, but deep down Silence knew differently. Even through the interference in his mind, that much was apparent.
Hector was now close behind, the other Party stooge too, and Silence moved himself and Callie back along the lines of neatly stacked English history books where they had been hiding, and grabbed more tightly at the curly blond locks in his left hand. There was a quick blast of machine gun fire from somewhere just beyond them, followed by another anguished wail and then a single rifle shot. Books were thudding to the floor, and then footsteps were charging on, getting nearer.
‘Your brother, your dear old Hector, dear old Frosty, I may have read him wrong, Callie. Do you know that? I think he’s just shot a man. How do you feel about that? I feel quite proud of him.’
‘Please don’t hurt him, there’s no need for this…don’t…don’t do this.’
‘I can’t help but wonder…and correct me if I’m mistaken, but shouldn’t a girl with a knife at her throat be a little more concerned about herself, Callie?’
‘He’s my brother…please…please don’t…’
‘He’s prey. You both are. You’re caught in a web and she’s going to eat you all up, sooner or later. It’s what she does.’
‘I don’t understand…please…what do you mean?’
‘Knowledge isn’t the power it once was, Callie.’
Hector was turning through the archway between the bookshelves and moving down towards them, a machine gun now slung over his back, his own rifle up in quivering hands, he also carried a twitching, gurning face of faux machismo. In that moment Silence found a begrudging admiration for him. For them both. He peeped over Callie’s head and greeted Hector with a smile.
‘How was it Hector? How was shooting a man? I understand it’s your first?’
‘Let her go. Don’t hurt her.’
‘I asked you a question.’
‘Are you okay, Callie?’
‘She’s fine. But how are you Hector? How are you with taking a life? How is it for you, crossing that line and knowing you can never cross back? Tell me.’
‘He isn’t dead.’
‘No?’ Silence paused and turned his eyes to his left as if he were searching for something on the other side of the floor. His smile came again, bigger and brighter than
before. ‘No. I believe you are right.’ For a split second Silence saw the second shooter lying underneath a shelf of books. He was staring down at a bloody mangled mess where his right hand used to be. ‘But I don’t think he will be playing tiddlywinks so good any more.’
Hector took another step forward. ‘Don’t you hurt her.’
‘That rather depends on you. Are you ready for that responsibility, Hector?’
‘Take me instead. You want me? Let her go.’ Hector pulled the rifle down and then turned it flat, offering it to Silence as if it were a gift. ‘Please, there’s no need for this. What do you want?’
‘I wanted to slice your sister in front of you. If you really want to know.’
Callie sunk into Silence’s body and turned panicked, watering eyes to the ceiling, her hands by her side squeezing the air as if some invisible answer was to be found in the dancing dust particles doing their turn in the dull light shafts.
‘No. Please…don’t hurt her…’
‘Don’t be tedious, Hector. I quite enjoy you. Let’s not change that just yet.’
‘What do you want me to do? Please…’
Silence looked above Hector and could see the boy on the next walkway up across the library, he had a machine gun now and the sight was as ridiculous as it was unnerving. The boy was shouting down to the ground floor and a moment later Mia was shouting back.
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