Reviver: A Novel

by Seth Patrick

  Who was Hannerman following? Not them, surely?

  To risk coming here himself had to mean Hannerman was working alone, all that was left; the desperation on his face a sign he was making it up as he went. Maybe Hannerman just wanted to hit at revivers any way he could. Jason and Pru were among the best revivers in the country.

  Or Sam, he thought. Sam, who had initiated the project that had kick-started Hannerman’s whole venture.

  God, no, Jonah thought. He tried Never’s number again. It rang.

  ‘Jonah?’ whispered Never. ‘Thought you were in your talk?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Tech presentation, Hall 2. J. J.’s here with me.’

  ‘Felix Hannerman isn’t dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hannerman’s here, Never. In the foyer, heading to the garden. He’s planning something. I think he’s following Sam. I don’t want to spook him. Tell security.’

  A moment of silence as Never digested what Jonah was telling him. It was fair enough, Jonah thought. A few seconds to decide if his friend had gone crazy. ‘On it,’ said Never.

  Sam and the others were nearing the end of the corridor. He’s not following them, Jonah told himself.

  A slip of paper fell from the speech notes Sam was carrying. He stopped walking and picked it up, then continued.

  Hannerman stopped too, matching their steps.

  Sam was in danger.

  Jonah increased his pace, wondering what Hannerman intended. Wondering what the hell he could do about it.

  Sam and the others reached the end of the corridor, rounding a corner into the walled garden area. As Hannerman approached the corner, Jonah could see he was closing on them.

  Hannerman slipped one hand into a pocket and pulled something out, keeping it hidden in his fingers. The sun glinted off it for an instant. A blade? He may not have risked bringing anything through security, but getting some kind of knife in a hotel wouldn’t be hard.

  Hannerman was speeding up. Jonah did the same, the indecision painful now. He started to run, started to gain ground. Hannerman looked back, his eyes meeting Jonah’s, a sudden fiery realization on his face; he turned back again and ran on, long strides that Jonah couldn’t match.

  No, thought Jonah. NO.

  ‘Sam!’ he yelled. ‘Run!’ He heard a shout from behind him and caught a quick look as he reached the turn: two security guards, not yet at the far end of the corridor. Ahead, he saw Sam, looking past Hannerman at Jonah, not noticing Hannerman bearing down on them all. Jonah thought his shout had made things worse, but Jason Shepperton had seen, moving towards Hannerman as the blade raised and descended.

  Jonah was there in five strides.

  Hannerman’s hand shot out again and again, Shepperton’s arms flailing in the way of the blade, blood flying. Sam and Pru were hitting out at the attacker. Jonah let his momentum do the work, lunging into Hannerman’s side, grabbing tight and taking him down, the fall heavy, Jonah on top. Hannerman was splattered in Jason Shepperton’s blood, and Jonah could feel it soak through his own shirt.

  The grip on the blood-covered knife was lost; it skittered out of reach, just a small paring knife that Hannerman could have stolen from the hotel kitchen.

  Hannerman was winded, but there was more: severe chill where bare skin contact was made. Jonah used it, putting his hands fully over Hannerman’s face. The shock in the man’s eyes was clear, but it didn’t last. He brought his knee up, hitting Jonah hard in the thigh, pushing him off with ease. The man looked thin but he was strong, up and running before any other help reached them, bystanders getting out of the way as he ran to a closed doorway in the wall around the garden. He kicked it open and ran through.

  Jason Shepperton was lying on the ground, blood everywhere, arms covered in wounds, one pouring blood even as Jason tried to clamp his other hand over it. A rush of people started helping; Sam and Pru crouched by Jason’s side, both covered in blood, Sam’s face grey.

  The man he’d taken as a security guard now had a gun drawn, a detective’s badge hanging over the breast pocket of his jacket. He was on his radio, giving rapid orders, looking around for Hannerman. ‘Where?’ he yelled.

  Jonah took a breath. ‘This way,’ he said, and ran.

  * * *

  Jonah led the way out the door Hannerman had broken through, into a staff and hotel vehicle lot, passing service entrances to the hotel before catching a glimpse of Hannerman rounding a corner in the distance. By the time they reached it to find themselves at the front of the hotel, there was no sign of him. The detective was waving to other officers and security guards while Jonah tried to find anyone who’d seen Hannerman run past, but they all were just staring at him. He looked down, realizing how much blood was showing on his white shirt. Hannerman, all in black, had been less conspicuous.

  A car passed along the hotel driveway ahead of him. From the driver’s seat, Hannerman’s eyes met his, and the car sped away.

  ‘There!’ he shouted to the detective, running after it, stopping when it was clear the chase was pointless.

  But Hannerman had pushed it too hard. Two hundred yards down, at the tight bend joining the main street, the car skidded, the rear hitting a concrete fencepost hard. Hannerman gunned it repeatedly, tyres screeching and digging up gravel, but the wire fence had snarled the car; it wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘Get everyone back,’ the detective instructed, eyes fixed on the car. ‘Inside the hotel. Now.’

  Hannerman got out and went to the rear of the car, disappearing from view as he worked at the tangled fencing.

  Jonah felt rage grow inside him. He had little time for Jason Shepperton, but he was a colleague. The injuries had looked serious and would leave their mark. Sam, though: that was the real source of his anger. Sam was family.

  The rage sent him running towards the car. A shout came from behind him, but the anger was all he knew. He ran, full stride, as hard as he’d run in his life. Then he froze.

  Hannerman had seen him. He stood slowly from behind the car’s rear, eyes wide. A gun in his hand.

  Another shout came from behind Jonah, but his mind had blanked, his legs unable to move. He suddenly understood where the rage had really come from. Daniel Harker, woken long enough to want to charge down the man who’d killed him.

  The gun came up.

  At once Jonah sensed something coming fast at him from his right; the gun fired; Jonah was shunted from the side; he heard the bullet whip past. The force of impact took him to the ground, over a low wall that ran alongside the road, into struggling greenery and rag-tag bushes.

  He felt shaky with panic and started to stand. Another shot came, stone chipping from the wall, alarmingly close. He felt hands grab him and pull him down. He looked beside him.

  It was Never Geary, panting, red-faced and annoyed. ‘For fuck’s sake, stay down.’

  Jonah said nothing. In his mind he could see the gunman running towards the wall, see him standing over them both with a wide bloody grin, shooting until their faces were pulp and gristle. Fear and adrenaline were making him shiver. He heard a car door open and shut. The sounds of distant sirens. Shouts coming closer. More shots fired. Tyres squealing.

  Then Never slowly raised his head and looked over the wall.

  ‘You OK?’ came a man’s voice.

  Holding up a hand, Never nodded, then thought to make sure about Jonah. ‘Are you?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got blood all over you. Check it’s not your own.’

  Jonah ran a trembling hand over himself. ‘OK. I think.’

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ asked Never. ‘You went all Bruce Willis on me.’ He stood and gave his hand to Jonah, helping him up.

  ‘I don’t know. I just lost it. I didn’t know he had a gun. If I’d known…’ Even as he said it, he wondered if it would’ve made a difference to how he’d reacted. How Daniel had reacted. ‘Christ, Never, if you hadn’t come after me…’

  ‘You’re welcome. For the record, thou
gh, first I knew about the gun was when the fucker fired it.’ He smiled at Jonah, a pained smile. Jonah smiled back in relief. Then, in unison, their smiles failed, their thoughts synchronized. Jason. Pru. Sam.

  * * *

  Grim, they ran back to the rear of the hotel.

  The area was filling as the hotel emptied, people desperate to see what had happened, both police and security struggling to marshal them back inside.

  ‘Jonah!’ It was Ray Johnson. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Hannerman,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Hannerman’s dead,’ said Johnson. ‘I heard they’d identified his body.’

  Jonah thought about the charred remains he’d seen after the catastrophic raid on the house, remembering Bob Crenner’s words that day: The only thing even resembling a body is under that tarpaulin. ‘They were wrong. I don’t know who made the mistake, Detective, but they were wrong.’

  The flow of people was moving against them now, as those around the back were being corralled to the main entrance.

  ‘You can’t go that way,’ called one of the security team, but Johnson showed his badge and they hurried past them all, emerging and seeing blood-soaked towels in a pile beside a small group. A man and a woman were kneeling beside Jason Shepperton, the name badges they wore identifying them as symposium attendees. Pru was standing six feet away. The sirens were growing louder. Help was on its way.

  Jonah saw Sam sitting on a bench, alone, looking pale and distant, wrapped in a blanket that one of the staff must have given him, drying blood spattered across his face and on his sleeves. Jonah hurried over to him, while the others went to Pru and Jason.

  ‘Sam?’ Sam’s eyes looked towards him, lost. Something about the expression on his face scared Jonah. ‘Sam?’ Jonah turned his head, catching Never’s eye and calling him over.

  ‘Jason’s stable,’ said Never. ‘He’s badly cut, but they’ve managed to stem the blood flow, so they don’t think it’s life-threatening.’ He saw the look in Jonah’s eye. ‘What?’

  ‘Something’s wrong with Sam.’

  Crouching beside Jonah, Never put his hand on Sam’s arm. ‘Sam? Talk to me.’ Sam’s eyes were glazed. ‘I think he’s in shock.’

  Jonah took Sam’s hand, startled by how cold it felt, then pulled one side of the blanket away from his lap. He moaned at the sight. From Sam’s hip down to his knee, his jeans were drenched in fresh blood.

  Looking close, Jonah spotted the small cut in the cloth of Sam’s jeans where the knife had entered, just above the hip. He looked up and saw two paramedics hurrying around the corner heading for Jason, but Never was already shouting to them for help.

  * * *

  Jonah and Never sat, restless and silent in the hospital general waiting area. The blood on Jonah’s clothes was long dried and starting to brown; two police officers were on guard by the entrance, another waiting by the operating theatre where they were working on Sam. Hannerman had not been found yet, the police presence a precaution. But Hannerman seemed a life away, almost an irrelevance, as Sam fought to survive.

  Jason and Sam had been taken at once in the ambulance; Jonah and Never had followed after giving hurried statements to the detectives at the scene, Jonah keeping it simple, telling them that handling Daniel Harker’s revival had allowed him to recognize Hannerman.

  It had fallen to Jonah to call Helen Deering, pain in his voice as he told Sam’s wife what had happened. Helen was in the surgery waiting room now, insisting on being left alone in spite of Jonah’s pleas.

  Jason, meanwhile, was stable and awake upstairs. Jonah and Never had been to see him, police guard at the door, his girlfriend by the bed; he was as eager as the rest of them for news of Sam. His arms were bandaged, a total of eighty-seven stitches, without an artery nicked or a tendon severed, while Sam was close to death from a single wound. Jonah and Never had returned to the general waiting area and had been there ever since.

  ‘I’m going to go see Helen,’ said Never. ‘See if there’s any news.’

  Alone, Jonah found himself thinking about standing frozen while a gun raised towards him; thinking about Sam, and how the last words they’d exchanged had been words of anger.

  He had reached no conclusions by the time Never returned.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said Never. ‘They’ll tell us as soon as they have anything.’

  It was three hours before news came, and when it did it was Helen they saw approach, dismay on her face, bursting into tears as she reached them and embraced Jonah. He held her as her sobs shook them both. After a time, she managed to speak.

  ‘He’s out of surgery, but critical. They don’t know. They don’t know if he’ll pull through.’ It was all she could get out before the sobs took hold again.

  * * *

  Jonah was focused on the clock in the Emergency reception area. Six o’clock came and went and he watched each and every tick, the rate of time impossibly slow. Helen was beside him, head in hands, staring at the floor, taking a few moments before she went to the post-op area, where Sam was due to be taken shortly. Robert, their son, was on his way from Florida, and was expected to land before seven. Jonah would be glad when he got there, someone to provide the real support that he was failing to give.

  It was just the two of them, Never having gone to get a round of coffee.

  Helen sniffed gently, staring up at the clock Jonah was watching. ‘We do have it, you know.’

  Jonah turned, puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘If it came to the worst.’ Not moving her eyes from the clock. Her voice one-tone, curiously detached.

  ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘Revival insurance.’

  Jonah felt ice fill his soul.

  ‘He was always telling me not to expect too much,’ she said. ‘Premiums rise as you age, you see. Inevitably you can’t afford the best. And he had all his own people to compare against. He’s so proud of you all. Maybe a little biased.’ She looked at Jonah and chuckled, the jarring sound loaded with despair. ‘Eighty-three per cent. That’s the figure. Eighty-three per cent chance of successful revival. That’s their best-case scenario too. Like rolling a dice and hoping you don’t get a one. And they don’t try again if it fails, not with the insurance we have. You only get one chance at it.’ She looked at Jonah and tried to smile. ‘Sam often talked about the way you handled things, Jonah. About the care you’d take with a family and the effect that had on them.’

  Jonah’s heart was pounding. Suddenly the room was airless.

  Helen went on. ‘I know it’s not fair. I know. And I know he wouldn’t admit to it. But deep down Sam wouldn’t want anyone except you doing it.’

  Jonah’s mind reeled. Helen’s tear-filled eyes were glued to his, the request clear enough. Jonah said all he could have said: ‘He’ll pull through, Helen. He’s strong.’

  Helen Deering nodded without conviction. ‘I don’t have any right to ask, Jonah, but I can’t bear it. I can’t. Please. Promise me. If it comes to it. Let us say good-bye.’

  With nowhere to hide, Jonah found himself nodding.

  When Never returned with the coffee, Jonah excused himself and found a toilet, retching hard until his stomach was empty and he was spitting nothing but bile.

  27

  Ray Johnson’s day wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. When he’d tracked her down first thing that morning, the New York cop giving a presentation had turned out to be very cute indeed, but very married. Then all hell had broken loose. Thoughts of that buffet lunch were long gone.

  Once Sam Deering had been taken to hospital, the conference was cleared; more officers were brought in to take witness statements, but with so many people there it was mostly a case of logging contact details and sending them home.

  This wasn’t any of Ray’s business, not officially, but his connection to the case was obviously relevant and he felt a level of blame he couldn’t shake. He hadn’t been the one who’d signed Hannerman off as a corpse, but he’d seen Hannerman’s pic
ture enough times and imagined it with the thin features Daniel Harker had described during his revival. With Hannerman presumed dead there was a chance those pictures hadn’t even made it to the briefings for the conference security teams, and even if they had, they’d have been considered peripheral.

  Ray was one of a handful of people who could have recognized the man, and he hadn’t spotted him.

  He made himself known to the detective in charge at the scene, one Earl Pellman, a weathered cop who looked old enough to be a grandfather but tough enough to one-punch most men to the floor. Ray told him he’d been on the Harker case; Pellman was already up to speed on that and what had followed. The assumption was that Hannerman had simply not been present at the police raid that had led to the inferno and had been working alone since, attempting one desperate, final act.

  Whether the conference had been an intended target originally was unclear. If so, this was certainly not the well-planned attack that Harker’s kidnappers would have had in mind. If anything, it looked like Hannerman had been making it up as he went along.

  ‘Frankly,’ said Pellman, ‘I doubt he expected to escape.’

  ‘If there’s any way I can help, sir,’ said Ray. ‘I reckon I know Hannerman’s face better than anyone else here. And I know Miller and Geary. Makes it personal.’

  Pellman looked at him for a moment. ‘Miller, huh? The reviver who tackled Hannerman, the one who identified him? I read his statement. Tell me, are all revivers that crazy?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but I’d say they earn the right.’

  ‘Amen to that. Well, I tell you what. If you really want to help, I’d be a fool to say no. This is a situation we need to turn around before we all look like we couldn’t yank our own dicks unassisted, so I’m sending some of my people out to see if we can narrow down which way Hannerman went. We don’t even know if he drove out of Richmond or went to ground in the city. CCTV or eyeballs, something saw which way, and the sooner we know, the better. Tag along with one of them. If you know the man’s face so well, there might be some footage you can rule in or out.’