Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  Then Raizbeck’s screams broke the silence.

  It was their battle cry, and they answered.

  Hector was up off the ground first, bowling into the hefty weight of Fallon before him. Fallon was stood side on to his prisoners, his body half turned to the cliff edge and his boss’s screams when Hector’s shoulder connected at the base of his back. Arms landed around Fallon’s waist, slid over the machine gun and ended up holding around his beefy thighs. As Fallon turned, Hector grabbed tight and the bigger man lost his footing and fell backwards, just as his machine gun discharged and an angry blast of bullets shredded the air where Hector had just been. Callie and Albie leapt at Fallon together, both women lunging for the machine gun, Callie grabbing the body of the weapon as Albie wrapped her hands around Fallon’s wrists and tried to force him off.

  Sam had scrabbled up to his feet and was heading straight towards Tommy as Mia began to close in on his right. Everett’s confusion had born itself in indecision and gave them both valuable seconds, as he first swung his machine gun up towards Mia and then across to the advancing Sam. The young boy read his decision before he had even made it and threw himself down on his side in front of Everett just as a heavy explosion of machine gun fire erupted over his head. Skidding across the rain lashed, mud slicked surface Sam slid into Tommy Bergan’s body and then aimed a kick out to his side, slamming Everett hard in the back of his right leg and making him buckle down on his knees. Mia’s pistol was in his hand a second later.

  ‘No!’ Mia had crossed to them and now stood over Everett. ‘No Sam!’ Mia bent down and snatched Everett’s machine gun free of his hands and launched it across the road. Backing up a step she shook her head. A fleeting glance fell on Everett and then she quickly looked away, as if what she had seen repulsed her. ‘No. No Sam. He lives. You hear me?’ Mia didn’t wait for a response. Backing up another step she pivoted around and turned her attention to the other side of the road.

  Hector, Callie and Albie were covering the writhing body of Fallon like wild animals feeding on a felled prey. Kicks connected with his head, and chest and legs as three sets of hands tried to wrestle the machine gun free of vice like hands. Hector had the middle and index finger of his right hand behind the trigger of the weapon, holding it from firing. Between them the machine gun rocked from side to side as Fallon grunted and yelped and finally roared. As Mia moved off to the side, looking for a shot, the big bulk on the ground started to stand, the three bodies coming with him.

  ‘Get off me! Get these damn bastard lunatics off me!’

  Fallon started to jerk his hefty frame back and forth, trying to shake off the human limpets that clung to him. Albie was the first to release her hold, and then Callie followed her a few seconds later. Hector still hung from Fallon’s back, his bleeding and bruised fingers wedged behind the trigger, refusing to budge. Fallon spun in a circle trying to shake him off, hands reaching behind him, slapping and punching air as Hector expertly ducked and dodged.

  ‘Hey, haircut,’ Mia shouted at them. Hector looked out from behind Fallon’s head, a crazy defiant grin somehow complimenting his hair. ‘You want to lift your legs up?’

  Hector complied, understanding instantly, and as he swung his legs up to hug around Fallon’s waist, Mia jerked the machine gun down and fired. The bullets tore clean through Fallon’s feet and shins, a light red mist blooming up before them as the two men crumpled into a heap on the floor. Hector was up in a flash, the machine gun held aloft above him like a trophy.

  Mia turned from the screams, the triumph, and the gunfire she knew was to follow, and walked back across to Sam and Everett.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said simply. ‘You want to explain this to me?’

  ‘No. Not right now.’ Mia gently plucked the pistol from Sam’s hands and passed him the machine gun. ‘I need you to go get Blarney for me. Will you do that please, Sam?’

  ‘Sure, but…’

  ‘Please, Sam. He’s in a white transit van…’

  ‘I think I can probably follow the barking, Mia.’

  ‘Yeah, you do that. Please…please just go get him for me.’

  Sam lingered, moving from foot to foot. ‘Who is this guy? Why do you want…’

  ‘Please! Please, Sam. Leave us. Go get Blarney for me, and take the others with you. Will you do that?’ The firmness in her voice gave Sam little room to question or refuse her, yet still the young boy dawdled restlessly beside her, the machine gun swinging absently in his hand like a toy that had lost its novelty. ‘Take the others. I will be right behind you. Promise. Go on, Sam.’

  Sam eyed Everett threateningly, and then offered a small, reluctant grunt of compliance.

  One by one they left Mia alone with Everett, concerned whispering and hesitant footsteps slowly fading out into the still morning air until the only sounds that remained were the gentle lapping of the sea on the rocks of Storm Tail cove, and somewhere, further on in the car park, the relentless barking of a very angry dog.

  13

  Mia paced around in a wide circle. Faced with the man who had lived in her dreams for the past six months, finally staring at the truth she had been searching for all that time, that time spent feeling the guilt, and hoping for the redemption, she suddenly had no idea what to say to him.

  ‘What?’ Sullivan’s suspicious eyes followed her circling. ‘What do you want from me?’

  Mia’s right foot splashed into a puddle, the water soaking through her battered boot, but it barely registered. A seagull, circling the dirty dawn sky, called down to them and Mia turned her eyes up to find it. ‘I love the seaside. I used to go to the seaside with my parents when I was young.’

  ‘That’s nice for you.’

  ‘Such good times we had. So many happy memories. I learned to swim at the seaside.’ Mia noticed cuts and scars on the back of his neck, and above them there was a small patch on his skull where hair no longer grew. He looked smaller than she remembered. ‘I need you to know me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need you to know me. I need you to know my name. You have to. This can’t happen. We can’t allow them to do this to us.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, girl? Of course I know you, we all know you. You’re Mia Hennessey. I don’t need anyone telling me that. The Party knows you, we all know what you did.’

  ‘And you’re Everett?’

  ‘So what?’

  Mia shook her head defiantly. ‘No.’ She continued around him, staring down at that impossibly sad face, trying to hold her heart in place, willing the release of tears that had long since dried. ‘Your name is Sullivan.’

  He laughed, and that laugh hurt her. ‘That so? Well if it stops you shooting me with that little pistol there then I guess I’m happy to be whoever you want me to be.’

  ‘You’ve met me before.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Did I? That was good of me.’

  ‘Look at me, Sullivan.’

  ‘Names Everett, girl.’

  ‘Look at me!’ The pistol jabbed against the scar on his forehead and then Mia was leaning her face into his, eyes finding eyes and pleading them to see, to understand. ‘Look at me, Sullivan! See me. You know me! You were my friend. You saved my life. Bleeker Hill…we were at Bleeker Hill together. You remember, you must remember that place! Tell me you remember!’

  ‘Listen girl…’

  ‘Look at me!’

  ‘I am looking at you, you stupid little girl! I see you! I see you and I don’t damn well know you. My name is Everett. I’m a member of The Party. I’ve never been to Bleeker Hill, I’ve never met you before and I have no damn idea what in the hell you are screaming about, so you want to shoot me, then shoot me! Don’t waste my time.’

  ‘You’ve got a family. You must remember your family.’ Mia stepped away from him and began pacing again, back and forth on the muddy ground. ‘You had a wife, you had a wife and a daughter.’

  �
��Girl, listen…’

  ‘Don’t call me that! My name is Mia. You know who I am. You’re my friend! The Party has done something to you. They’ve corrupted you.’

  ‘The Party loves me!’

  ‘They’ve killed you, you stupid bastard! Don’t you see? They’ve stolen your memories. You are an experiment. Why don’t you know that? Why can’t you see?’

  He shook his head in disbelief at this stupid little girl and her crazy ramblings. When he replied, his words were soft and measured like a father explaining to his child why he must deny her. ‘Listen, I have no wife and I have no children. Now you need to understand that. Don’t tell me who I am. I know who I am, do you understand? I have no family, and now, thanks to you, I’m running low on the friends front too. I’m sorry, Mia, I believe you that somehow you think…’

  ‘These people used you! These people aren’t what you think they are. You aren’t what you think you are. Your name is Sullivan.’

  ‘No. No it isn’t. You’re wrong, girl.’

  ‘Your name is Sullivan. My name is Mia. You had a wife and a daughter and you are my friend and you have to remember!’ The pistol struck him across the nose and then Mia was grabbing him at his shirt. ‘Remember me, Sullivan! Tell me you know who you are! Please!’

  ‘Girl…’

  ‘Don’t call me that…please, Sullivan…please…’

  ‘My name is Everett. My family is The Party. I am here to serve The Party and help put right this country. I love The Party and they love me. That is the only love we need, and if only you could see that, Mia, you might have saved yourself. They would have welcomed you. You could have been part of our family too.’

  Mia pushed herself from him and then punched him across the face. ‘Don’t do this! Why are you doing this to me? You’re my friend!’

  ‘I could never be a friend to you. I know what you did. We all know what you did.’ Blood oozed from a cut under his eye, and he dabbed at it and then held the bloody fingers up to Mia. ‘We all know about the people you killed at Bleeker Hill. You’re a murderer, Mia. You can’t do what you did and think you won’t ever be judged. Someone, somewhere will judge you for what you have done.’

  Mia turned her back to him, her heart pounding in her chest like a piston. ‘I know.’ She tried to catch a breath but her heartbeats were racing ahead of her. A thousand voices seemed to be whispering to each other inside her mind as if she had a head full of crossed lines. The circling seagull squawked high above, and it sounded like laughter. It was mocking her, amused at her situation and its own given freedom.

  Ahead, a weak sun was dragging itself hopefully upwards from the distant horizon, deepening the blue, gently colouring in the grey. ‘Thank you,’ she found herself muttering, and then she repeated it, louder, as she spun back around to him. ‘Thank you, Sullivan.’ Mia raised the pistol and those faceless voices fell silent and that piston of a heart slowed. There was no more hesitation and now there would be no more restless dreams. The pistol cracked and shook as a single bullet exploded through Sullivan’s forehead. The cove down below her seemed to hold the sound and slowly return it in a timid echo, silencing the seagull that now broke its scavenging watch and flew away. Mia wandered to the side of the felled stranger and emptied the remaining four bullets into his chest.

  ‘Mia?’

  They were stood in a line at the edge of the road, waiting for her – Albie and Sam and Hector and Callie – bloodied, bruised and battered, and ready to move on. In front of them, sitting bolt upright, Blarney watched his master with a delicate tilt of the head, his ginger stump of tail flicking expectantly behind him. Her faithful friend seemed to be smiling.

  ‘Mia?’ Sam asked again, hooking his thumbs under the two machine gun straps hanging over his shoulders.

  Mia calmly wedged the empty pistol between her belt and trousers and then plucked free the mangy stuffed toy rabbit. ‘Let’s go,’ she said firmly, and crossed to her friends.

  Blarney tugged the toy rabbit free from her hand and shook it viciously, his jaunty little backside finding its swagger as he followed the others back into the car park and on towards the campervan.

  Five minutes later and they were back on the coast road, heading off towards whatever they would find next.

  Or whatever would find them.