The Dead Boy

by Saunders, Craig

  'What? How dare you? You...who the hell do you think you are, Sir?'

  Mr. Fenchurch did not reply, but took a sheaf of papers from a briefcase he carried. O'Dell noticed a pistol in the case, but it was the papers Fenchurch passed to O'Dell. 'Before you lose your temper, Mr. O'Dell...this is what you wrote during the test last year. It is your handwriting, yes?'

  It was. A scrawl, unlike his usual script, but unmistakably his.

  'Mr. O'Dell, at first we failed to understand the significance. But we believe you have worked out original, vast improvements to integrated circuit technology, replicated equations we can't even understand from work as yet unpublished. The compound you took allowed this to happen, but more. We believe some degree of precognition is there in your writing.'

  'I saw the future. Sir.'

  'There is a date, there, isn't there? You wrote over and over that date. Do you know what that date is?'

  'Sir?'

  '22nd November, Mr. O'Dell. Ring a bell?'

  'Kennedy?'

  'Yes indeed.'

  'What is this? Fake? A joke?'

  'No joke, my friend. The drug you were given is an early iteration of an experimental treatment. We, the branch and I, are working toward something great, Mr. O'Dell. And now, I'm offering you the chance to join us.'

  'Why can't I remember...'

  Fenchurch wavered in O'Dell's memory and his sight, and George felt himself dragged forward, like a ghost brought out into the light. For just an instant, O'Dell's gaze was on George, rather than Mr. Fenchurch.

  Then, gone.

  O'Dell clutched at his head. Blood ran from his nose, and Fenchurch stared at him.

  'What's happening to me?'

  'Similar effect to LSD. This, I suspect, is rather like a flashback. Extensive research was undertaken by America's Central Intelligence Agency. The compound you were given is rather different, though the basic, primary effects are comparable. The secondary effects, however, are more unpredictable. Like precognition, telepathy...'

  'Are you saying I...saw the future?'

  'Mr. O'Dell, that is precisely what I am saying. We would like you to participate in some further test on your abilities, with a view to including you in our bureau. A bunch of thinkers, really. Philosophy of the future, seeing patterns and the like. Trying to stay ahead of the game, as it were...'

  'Mr. Fenchurch,' said O'Dell, but he fell to his knees. Fenchurch reached out to steady O'Dell. And as they touched, something happened that O'Dell had never expected.

  He saw everything that would be, and the fire that must follow.

  *

  George saw through O'Dell's burning eyes and recoiled from the sights to come.

  He ran, his legs pumping and his young heart pounding, back into his own memories.

  He was just a frightened boy in a basement. The cold concrete on his bum made him want to pee. He had a can of fizzy orange before the supermarket.

  There was a man above him.

  He's dangerous, thought George. Then.

  But he'd been wrong. It was The Man with Fire in his Eyes. He was the one to fear.

  George understood, deep down, that he was lost. His remarkable inner voice, that wiser and older heart that beat in time with his, tried to push George from that memory, and be the boy he was now.

  You're inside O'Dell's mind, it told him.

  But O'Dell's mind was crushing George's thoughts. O'Dell's mind was cavernous. It reeked of smoke, of ashes and dirty fires that burned in plumes of blue. The sickly feel O'Dell smothered George. Everything was suffused with that awful, rank stench.

  Concentrate, George told himself. His own voice, but an older him.

  Concentrate.

  It was hard, trying to breach O'Dell's mind. Like how sometimes he'd knock over a drink, misjudging the length of his arm, perhaps. Then panic, overreact, move too fast, and instead of small spill he would pitch the whole cup on the floor and O'Dell would shout at him.

  No.

  O'Dell was never there.

  Go slow, thought George, with a child's thoughts. His mind is one of mum's glasses. She let you have a big boy glass. Don't break it. Go slow...

  There, in that great cavern, something glinted. Not entirely bright, like platinum or polished steel on a kitchen draining board. But metal, unmistakeable. Hanging there, inside the cavern.

  A memory?

  No, he thought. Not a memory. A...keepsake of a memory. Something left behind, maybe, to remember something taken.

  It was a bullet. The bullet was the doorway to the past.

  Run along the bullet, George. Run it down.

  George ran, following the bullet back to the past, to the right moment. From O'Dell's brain, through skull and skin, through gun smoke and a steely barrel full of fire...

  He looked back along the line the bullet would fly. Into O'Dell's eyes.

  Not madness, or hate, or fury.

  George saw sorrow.

  *

  Kurt William O'Dell's eyes filled with fire for the first time. In that instant, George, the child he was and the wiser man he would become, saw why O'Dell put a bullet in his brain.

  George...get out. This is too powerful. This is the core of him.

  George always trusted that voice. It was never wrong.

  He ran along the path of the bullet, back through the sadness in O'Dell's eyes.

  As he did, he saw it all. Decades of history, and O'Dell ruling it all along. A man with no memory, no conscious, but a singular drive and terrible power.

  His goal was to burn the world. The only thing that saved the world for fifty years was technology.

  George understood O'Dell's frustration, the man's impatience. To know his life's work, to know how to achieve it, and yet still be forced to wait over half a century.

  O'Dell bending politicians to his will, guiding scientist in their studies. Paying for research into computer technology with money that he persuaded rich men to give him, and forget.

  A man who could see the future, and who had the power to push the world toward it. He saw O'Dell speaking to soldiers, statesmen, travelling the world and shaking hands or holding a gun to heads. Scientists, whirling test tubes, slides under microscopes. Old towns, a lecture hall or a classroom, figures and numbers like complicated maths on blackboards. A dog, somewhere deep and distant, maybe when O'Dell had been a child.

  But George hated O'Dell, too.

  Wayland Redman was there, in O'Dell's buried, dislocated memory.

  All the boys who were taken, in wheelchairs like him, row upon row, all dead except for their remarkable minds.

  George ran all the way through O'Dell's life and lost memories, until his feet rested on the highway home.

  One glance behind him, and he saw a last memory O'Dell didn't even know he had.

  His mother, behind a large plate of glass.

  'Mum?'

  He faltered.

  Heat rose, but inside his mind rather than on his skin. Agony crippled George all over again. His mother wavered and disappeared. In her place, O'Dell was left and he leered at George with his horrible, yellow-toothed grin.

  'George Farnham. Honestly, I forgot about you.' This wasn't O'Dell before the bullet. This was O'Dell after - mad and dangerous and without pity or compassion. O'Dell tried to kill himself to stop becoming The Man with Fire in his Eyes. He succeeded, and in doing so allowed this madman to be born.

  It's not real, George told himself, because he had to. He's distracted...he's not that powerful.

  'Not that powerful? You think? You're a kid. A boy. You don't know.'

  There was no help here. Nothing and no one to save him.

  I...messed up.

  'You did, didn't you?'

  George bowed his head and saw his blood drip from his nose. It dripped onto a black surface.

  The road.

  'Look at me, boy. You want to burn, don't you? You're cold, alone? You miss your mummy, don't you?'

  He killed her...h
e killed everyone.

  'Cute. You sneak into my mind and try to whisper?'

  For a second, George thought that maybe O'Dell wasn't even talking to him. O'Dell's nose bled, even here safe and confident in his own strength.

  'Fucking kids,' said O'Dell. Talking to George, or some distant memory the boy could no longer touch?

  It didn't matter.

  George concentrated on his blood dripping on the road.

  Tarmac, blood, drip.

  Like a heartbeat, regular, steady. Drip. Comforting. Like...

  'Rain on a tin roof, George. Listen to US. Rain on a tin roof. You are one of US. Rain on a...'

  It wasn't George's voice, but it was similar enough to his. Like his, he knew this voice was never wrong.

  Rain on a tin roof. Follow the sound home.

  He glanced up, smiled at O'Dell.

  Rain on a tin roof.

  'What?' said the madman.

  George gave O'Dell something he learned from Francis in reply. His middle finger.

  *

  XVII.

  The Boss

  O'Dell glanced down at the watch on his wrist.

  0047:03:56...55...

  Plenty of time for coffee before Wayland's call. He got up, walked the few steps from his desk to a coffee machine on a counter against the wall. He clicked the kettle on, then, his watch began to vibrate against his wrist. A shrill alarm sounded, too. Loud, but all treble tones.

  What?

  He checked his watch again, his frown deepened.

  0009:59:55...54...

  'What in fuck?'

  His alarm, set for ten minutes before his ultimate freedom from the man on the phone, the man calling in the hits and tugging O'Dell's strings. But...

  O'Dell checked the phone in his pocket, woke it from standby and checked the time. It was right there, no lie. If the phone wasn't wrong, and neither was his watch. He laid his hand against the kettle. Warm, not cold like it should be, and the switch was off even though he had just pushed it down. Like the kettle had boiled, switched off, then cooled. Like time had passed with O'Dell simply standing by the kettle and sink, staring at nothing like some gormless cunt in a supermarket, looking at three for two offers and trying to work out the maths.

  He'd forgotten things before, sure...but thirty-seven minutes?

  He looked again, worried now and he wasn't accustomed to being worried about anything.

  0009:07:08...07...

  I stood here for thirty-seven minutes? Watching the kettle boil and cool...and don't remember anything?

  He might not remember anything, but he hadn't suddenly become stupid.

  Somehow, someone took those minutes away. Only someone remarkable could do that.

  He searched his thoughts, forced his memory to come back. It was like punching a cloud, like turning his rage and power on the weather and expecting it to obey.

  Nothing.

  There can't be nothing.

  But, that wasn't true, was it?

  For some reason a memory surfaced, nothing to do with his effort and more to do with his subconscious throwing him a lifeline. He focused, then unfocused and just let it bob to the surface.

  There...

  A vision. Children, vacant and dead-enough, their minds reduced to nothing but computers, parts of their brain matter removed. Nothing more than mannequins, nothing more. Yet there was something there.

  Something.

  The children, half-height, strapped to their idiot wheelchairs so that they couldn't fall out. Finding the children had been hard.

  Many grew into adults in those chairs. Many more died.

  Nearly sixty years in the making, forty-eight, now, since he began to build the mainframe.

  The human mind was remarkable. Thousands of talented human minds, though? Working in unison?

  Brain-dead except for the functions he wanted of them. Remarkable children turned to his purpose...but nothing children, too. Missing, diminished...and yet...

  O'Dell, before a long glass window, looking down at them and smiling and a memory of one of the few times he had felt such a chill as now.

  'You burned us,' they said. 'US.'

  As one, every child, adult, carcass left inside those triple towers turned their blind eyes toward O'Dell.

  *

  George opened his eyes before Francis. The table, their jumpers, even their hands were sticky with blood. Not dripping. The sound of sleet, hard on the metal over their heads. The freezing air in the common room. Even the smell of the two of them, unwashed, covered in nose blood. These things were wonderful.

  George thought perhaps that was enough talking for one night. He released Francis, and instead of calling her, but before he went he placed a dream in her head.

  She would dream of warm rain on a caravan, a holiday, and a time without pain.

  It would be enough, until she woke.

  He laid his head on the table, same as her. Francis slept, but George could not. His mind whirled, a storm of thoughts. His mother, O'Dell's sorrow, now dead. O'Dell's rage, still alive. For how much longer?

  Did it matter?

  Thoughts a child should not have to think alone. About his death, and the death of everything that remained. O'Dell was done. Why fight any longer? What was there to win?

  Round and round those thoughts ran inside his nine-year old mind. That older voice tried to calm him, but he could not calm himself.

  His sobbing must have woken Francis from her rainy dream, because some time later he felt her hand on his.

  'George? Why are you crying?'

  He liked Francis a lot. He'd nearly killed her.

  O'Dell's mind wouldn't leave. The taint was inside George now. The man's memories and thoughts and the awful things he'd done, but more than all that it was the sorrow that hit George, and kept hitting him. The sorrow would not let him be.

  O'Dell knew he would have to watch everything die, and that he would make everything die, and he'd still tried to stop it.

  Now George was following right along. Everything he touched was dying.

  Edgar would die. Francis. His father was dead. His mother...

  The image of her, her skull torn open, was bile inside his small boy's thoughts. Her highway made small, a winding dirt track, leading nowhere.

  George shook his head. He couldn't talk about it. He wouldn't. But he and Francis were connected, and even though he tried to keep it all inside, she took some of it. She picked it up, despite that he tried to quell it. But then, perhaps he wanted her to understand. Perhaps he didn't try hard enough. Perhaps...

  'George. Stop it. It's okay, George. It's okay.'

  She didn't ask what he saw through the highway in her mind, all the way back to O'Dell. Some, she saw. Some, he hid.

  George couldn't stop sobbing. Huge, heavy sobs. A muted wail from his broken mouth, clogged with blood and snot. He was disgusted with himself, with the feel of O'Dell, with the whole rotten world.

  But Francis was not the kind to give up. She never was. She didn't push George away. She was not repulsed by him, by what he was, or could be. She didn't shy from the thoughts that swamped his mind. She moved to George's side of the table and held him.

  'I'm tired Francis. I'm trying to be brave...but I can't. I'm scared.'

  Francis kissed his head and stroked his hair. She made simple, soothing noises. After a time, he pushed himself into her and she held him tighter and he let her.

  'No one needs you to be brave, George. It's okay, you know? You're nine. You're not supposed to be doing this alone. And you're not. I'm here.'

  She kissed his hair over and over while he cried.

  'You're the only one who forgot you're just a boy, honey.'

  He was glad that Francis remembered. Then, he remembered something.

  A winding dirt road...a road leading off. Narrow, strewn with weeds and debris and blown over with dirt and dust...but a road.

  Francis, he said. My mother. She's alive.

  *<
br />
  The stairway to the twenty-third floor was enclosed, protected from the weather that battered the old concrete with enough power for the structure to sway. Inside, away from the elements, ice still coated the walls and risers. Each step was lethal, and Wayland Redman bled. His heart struggled, weakened by age and pain. But he kept on, driven by fear, and by anger, and by hate.

  At the seventh floor he slipped and hit his ravaged right hand hard. He overreacted and fell forward, hands out. His hands were too weak to stop his fall. He opened a gash on his chin and his remaining two fingers broke.

  Between the twentieth and twenty-first floors he let go of loose, watery shit inside his trousers. He didn't mind, then. At least something was warm, if only for a short time.

  When he reached the top floor, then the last corridor, then the last room, he thought he would die. Exhausted, old, every single thing aching and hurting and pounding.

  Seventy-five, he thought. Fucking did it.

  He opened the door, unlocked.

  Silent, for perhaps two, three minutes. He couldn't find any words.

  'Fuck.'

  Rows of computer readouts. Vital signs. Thousands of them, on monitors all around a stark room of steel and glass.

  Images on monitors. Names along with each. Within a minute, Wayland understood just what the tower block was. Perhaps, he thought, even all three.

  One vast computer. O'Dell's boss was O'Dell, and he had invented him from a thousand tortured human parts.

  *

  O'Dell seized, remembering the children. When his vision returned, awareness of his endeavours faded once again, as it always did.

  For O'Dell, the transition was seamless. He lost time, and it was because someone had been inside. In his thoughts and memories. Someone with talents like his. Power like his.

  Who? There were none left, were there?

  Then he remembered.

  'The woman? Her?'

  The woman at The Mill. He'd given her his gun, turned his back on her.

  What the fuck was I thinking?

  Jesus, he thought. That was before everything...the field trial...

  Memory was an elusive adversary, for O'Dell. His white whale, hunted time and again. This time he snatched it before it could sink back to the depths.