The men watched. The man on the work surface sounded like he was trying to say something.
Whatever it was, Matt and Don watched the man die, grateful at the last when that awful burbling monologue ended.
Don moved to hold his friend, but Matt held up a hand not holding the knife, palm out.
'Don't, mate. Don't.' said Matt. Don's friend for near enough eight years, he had such a terrible, hollow look in his eyes.
'Matt...'
Matt shook his head, then plunged the knife he'd used on Wayland through his own scrawny neck.
'Ah, fuck, Matt,' said Don.
He sat right where he was on the kitchen floor and cried until he had nothing but snot left in the tank. He sniffed and snivelled for a while longer, then he dragged the bodies topside, one at a time, where he heaved them over the side to sink deep beneath the grey waves.
Grey, like everything left.
Don staggered on slow, tired legs back below. He touched a picture on the wall, then took a quarter bottle of whiskey from the locker beneath his bunk. He left his thick yellow slicker and his undercoat behind. Then, he drank the last of the whisky on the deck in the freezing storm and wished he could see his family again.
Even my shit dog, he thought.
He sat until he didn't feel the hunger any longer.
*
Eleanor walked. Snow and ice hung from the wires in the sky above her head. The ground, whether road or field, deep in snow or frozen but barren, was always hard going. The towns she passed were silent, dead things. Often, she didn't know it was a town until she was deep inside the boundaries. She could barely see fifty yards ahead.
She didn't stop. She couldn't.
Along the way she found food, frozen, which she part-thawed in the warmth of her coats. She wore goggles over her eyes, not for glare, for there was none, but to protect them against the temperature. At night, she sought shelter. To walk utterly blind would be idiocy.
After she killed the man in the factory or warehouse, whatever it had been, she was more cautious. She killed others, but only when given no choice at all. And, as she took each new step, words returned. Muffled, beneath a scarf over her face and a balaclava that saved her face from being bitten by the cold, she mouthed the words, tried out the shape of the names of things.
'Cold. Snow. Telegraph Pole. Car, burned. Car, buried. Road. Body. Leg, no body. Alone. One. Walk. Tired.'
Inside, sheltered for the night, she would roam dead people's houses, nothing to listen to but the endless wind and the sound of her own voice.
'Stairs,' she would say, just to be haunted by something other than the ghosts in the wind. 'Carpet. Cooker. Window. Wood. Cabinet. Wooden cabinet. Drawers...cupboards...glass and glasses and tap and sink and...'
In her sleep, in tents made of ice-crusted bed sheets and quilts, never lighting a light lest someone kill her while she slept, to eat or steal, she continued learning all through the night. Softly, in her sleep, she would speak words she remembered, or words US taught her, or sometimes just repeat remembered conversations that drifted through her dreams. Many nights she screamed and kicked her way back to waking. But as time moved on, Eleanor screamed less. She got better at sleeping, and better at surviving, too.
January the first was the coldest day she'd ever known, and it made her risk fire. She found firelighters, stinking of a fuel that promised heat, and a wood-burner, a basket of wood. She had three lighters hidden in the depths of her coats now. It only took one lighter, but all of the firelighters to get the flames burning. It was glorious. She stared at the fire the whole night, ate a tin heated on the metal top of the burner, the tin and paper label blackening while the food inside thawed, warmed, then bubbled.
Something like minced beef, in gravy, and the single greatest thing she had ever eaten her whole life. She cried.
She fell asleep in front of the fire. When she woke, it was dark. She touched the metal, ticking quickly as it cooled. She took the memory of that fading warmth on the road with her.
*
Maybe it was the memory of warmth that did it.
When the roads were no more, entirely lost beneath ice and snow, she headed straight on, unerringly toward the edge of the island. She had no destination in mind, but to walk, to achieve something, to see an end to her pointless task. But she did not give in, nor stop and sit in the snow and freeze like so many others. Occasionally she passed an iced form, laying or sometimes simply sitting. They must have been tired, she thought, those people who had died and could not even find the energy to lay still in the comforting blanket of snow.
Whenever she found herself thinking how nice it would be to rest under the white sheets, to stretch her aching legs and wriggle her toes under crisp cotton, she didn't give in. She walked harder, faster, until she could find shelter and rest and not die.
Not dying, though, was not her goal. It was too close, too immediate. To move, she needed something further away to aim for, and that was the coast. She knew that when she got there, she would go no further, but that didn't matter. What mattered was reaching the end, looking ahead, rather than down at her feet. So doing, when the roads became hidden, she created her own road, one that she could see in her mind. It was not white, like snow, or black like a road that cars might travel. Her road wasn't lit by cats' eyes, or artificially glowing lamps set high on concrete poles. Her road was a summer thing, of the countryside. A dirt road, the weeds at the side high and running along the middle. A single lane track, hard from the sun she imagined shining down. The sun was warm, the air still and hot and insects and birds made the song she walked through. Butterflies flew, sometimes, silent. Partridge clucked, startled, and bounced across the road, or pheasant that ran back and forth, idiotic but wonderful there in her memory and her imagination.
Sometimes the real road wavered, over streams, river, around burned, stinking cities and down meandering streets through old towns. Her path was always there, in her head, though, and for her it was far more real than the battered, frozen landscape all around.
She did not know it was January when her foot hit sluggish water that carried on and on, far into the murk that hid the distance (sometimes, when a blizzard hit, she could see nothing at all). She frowned, wondering for an instant if this was a river, or some lake. But it shifted, back, forth. Like waves.
She squatted, pulling the scarf and balaclava free for long enough that the tang of briny, salted water hit her freezing nostrils. She put them back on, and closed her eyes.
But the path didn't go. The things she saw in her mind merely grew brighter.
So easy. So easy to step out into the sea and walk until she felt nothing. Until she ended, like everyone else on the planet, perhaps.
Maybe, though, it was the memory of warmth that made that path so solid and real. She shrugged, the gesture lost beneath the many coats that kept her living.
And she was, wasn't she? She was alive. Still. Not just a dead thing come back to life any longer, a soulless shell, wandering blindly. She was...
Mortal.
Human.
At that thought, the road seemed to shift from her imagination and become real enough that she could feel it beneath her feet. Then, in that moment, a look of wonder flitted within her swathed face, a brightening in her eyes that she thought was gone forever. Up ahead, on the path in her mind, there was a young boy. Distant, still, but he held up a hand and she imagined squinting against the glare of the sun. Was he waving?
She thought he was. She thought, too, that maybe she recognised the boy.
'George?' she asked, and when she said his name, Eleanor Farnham remembered her son, and why US called her Mother.
*
XX.
The Last Flight
Men and women aren't creatures divided into the dark, or the light. Each has a monster inside them, each has a saint.
When those that remained on the rig in the North Sea began to work on getting the helicopter running, it could have gon
e either way. They could have bickered, fought, plotted to kill George, throw Edgar into the sea, perhaps keep Francis to themselves as some kind of toy, something to take the sting from the cold for a while until they all died anyway. They could have easily overpowered John Wake when the decision to fly was made. They could have taken the helicopter instead, and forced him to fly them to France, or England. But they did not. Sometimes, when human beings know death approaches and know it is a death they cannot fight, they can be heroes. Men who look into Death's hollow eyes and stand just that bit taller.
Few things polarise human spirit so well as death.
The riggers worked. They grumbled about the work. Two men died in one day, braving a terrifying squall that brought the heaviest snow any of them had seen in their lives. The two men, one a blunt, short man from Lancashire, the other a Brazilian geologist more used to boats that studied soundings on the seabed, were both swept into the sea and no one saw them fall away.
When the helicopter gamely sputtered it last, and landed Francis and her two companions on the rig, John Wake entertained no hope of ever flying again. For a while he cursed himself for abandoning his chopper to the elements, but they were all resourceful people, all made more so by necessity. They built a rudimentary shelter around the chopper, a clever thing that could stand the wind, but needed it, too - when they were ready to fly and finally released the bolts on the shelter, the roof and one metal side would simply be blown free.
It would probably fly further than the chopper itself, but Wake tried not to think about that. Mostly, he succeeded.
On the day they began work, Bors, now with a beard to match his frame, took Wake to one side, to a room with photographs on the wall. He pointed at one photograph in particular.
'The fact you made it here was a miracle. When we knew the end really was happening, the company put on three flights a day. Mostly, people left. On this, though,' he said, meaning the larger helicopter in the picture - far larger than the one which Wake was accustomed to piloting. It looked like a mini-bus. A thing build for purpose, fitted for rough conditions. Wake's chopper was commercial, for sight-seeing, and short hops at that.
He understood well enough.
'We do it because we have no choice, Mr. Bors. We're dead anyway, right? Might as well try for something amazing.'
'This I understand,' said the man. He stood a foot taller, and probably outweighed the pilot by thirty or forty pounds.
'Can you help? Give us a better chance?'
Bors shrugged. 'It's dangerous enough in one of these big choppers. I don't know how often they crash. Maybe ten, in a bad year...I don't know. The men and pilots wear dry suits. These things have two engines...your chopper has just one.'
'Yes.'
'These have floats, too. The land, they roll over in the sea...like...' Bors didn't have the word, but Wake did.
'Capsize?'
'Yes. Then you are upside down. The water freezes you, and you are confused and upside down. You understand this?'
'Dangerous,' said Wake.
'Yes. You would die.'
'Cheers,' said Wake without rancour. Bors smiled.
'But your helicopter will not...capsize. It will simply sink.'
'You're a ray of sunshine.'
'Thank you. But...your chopper, it is like a car in water, I think. Water will enter, if your tiny helicopter snaps. If you do not die in the first second. Men snap, too, when the chopper hits - their backs or legs. Spine goes crack. Far out from shore? No. The cold will kill you and then you'll drown, too. About three times dead,' Bors shrugged. 'Death flying in this weather.'
The pilot shrugged, too. 'We die...we die. It isn't a thing we can just not do. The kid wants to go. You know what? I want to, too. I'm not built to sit still, Bors.'
'Then, listen. If a thousand things happen or don't happen, you must get out...but you will not be able to. The pressure?'
The water would push against the windows and the doors, holding them shut, all the while the chopper would be sinking in freezing water. Even if they still lived, they would not make it to the surface. They would be confused, perhaps upside down, in heavy, frozen seas.
Wake understood.
Bors took something from his coat and passed it to Wake. 'The other men...they do not know I took this. We have small security on a rig, but hard men. I took this before the last men left, before they emptied the gun locker.'
Wake took the small automatic pistol Bors held out to him.
'Loaded?'
'Of course. You shoot out the windows. Small hole, perhaps...the glass is not like glass, you know?'
'Sure...I...'
'You, Francis, Edgar...you will have to kick. There are emergency handles on your helicopter. These you will you have to fight. When the cold hits, even if you can get out...you will need to fight more. You must want to live.'
'Bors, seriously...thanks for the pep talk. Thanks.'
Bors laughed, a booming thing from deep within his broad chest. 'I am helpful.'
'You are. Thank you.'
John Wake thought back on his conversation with Bors. He'd taped the pistol beneath his seat so it was easy enough to get.
Because Bors was right.
They were coming down. It was just a matter of when...out to sea, they would die for sure. On land, they'd probably die, but might stand a chance if he could manage to not break all their spines. Shallow water, they'd hit with a fair bang and then the cold would kill them.
Either way...he put their chances at around 1%.
The day he and Bors spoke the intakes were clogged, oil and engine frozen, seized up. The rotors sported beards of ice.
It's an old man, thought Wake, bundled into three coats and still freezing.
By the end of December, it was past its best, certainly. A man in his middle age, one that felt his years but thought he was still twenty. A man who knew he'd die...but not today. On the day of the last flight, John rose long before his passengers and went outside, through the storm. In the metal shelter, while the wind raged outside, the pilot lay his hand against the chill metal plates.
'You die today. You know that? You die, but you lived well. Make it there, you hear me? One last time. Carry us home.'
He wasn't sure if he was talking to the chopper or himself. Maybe it was both.
*
Edgar turned in his sleep. The bed was more narrow than his memory, but it was because Sarah was on his side on the bed. She always was. He opened his eyes and turned toward her, to move her knee from the small of his back. But she wouldn't move, even with his hand pushing at her. Her knee was cold, cold enough to wonder if she'd forgotten her hot water bottle. She often did, then snuggled into him. He was always warm. He shoved, this time, smiling. She slept heavy, she always did.
'Jesus, Sarah, shift over, would you?'
She turned then, smiling. He could see her perfectly well, because it seemed they'd slept past sunrise. It didn't feel late, but early still. That bright, early-hour sunshine of summer. Their bedroom was hot, boiling, bright. Her smile was genuine, though, and something stirred in him that seemed to stir slightly less often in his fifties, but he was fifty, wasn't he? Not dead. He could feel that gentle push of a slow hard-on growing against his pyjamas.
'Morning,' he smiled at her, in that way men have with their wives, that special smile when they wake up just right and they've got a little time before work, or maybe when their kids are downstairs or still sound asleep. Their breath would smell, but he'd push his head into her shoulder, and she would do the same with him.
'Edgar. Soon, now. It will be soon.'
His wife kissed him, and Edgar woke with the memory of cold lips on his. Then he remembered the helicopter, and knew what the dream meant.
It was just fine by him. The boy sought him out. He knew why, ever since the first day they met. Not because George needed him, but because Francis did.
For a nine year old boy, George was pretty damn smart.
He
looked across at George. Francis was still asleep. George's eyes peered back at Edgar in the dim light.
'Will you look after her, George?'
George nodded, then he beckoned Edgar to him. Edgar laid his good hand on the bed, and George put his own, smaller hand, on top.
Always.
'Then, I think I'm good to go.'
You don't have to. You could stay.
Edgar smiled sadly, and shook his head.
'I see things, like a sixth sense, maybe. I'm not like you, George. Or him. I'm just...'
I don't know everything, Edgar, said George. The voice in my head? It's older than me. I think it is me, Edgar. I've been thinking about it. All the time, I think about everything. About him, about me, about why me, what I should do. But most of it, doesn't matter how hard I think - I don't understand. I think that older voice is me, talking to myself. Like an older man, telling his younger self all the things he wished he'd known?
'I think that's a good wish to come true,' said Edgar.
But I'm nine. I don't get it. But I do know you needed saving, and so did Francis. Maybe that was enough?
Edgar leaned in and kissed George's cheek.
'That sounds quite noble, my friend. And I won't stay. This way's better. To the end. And you know what? I know something even you don't know. Your mother's proud of you, George. When she sees how good you are, she'll cry, George. Trust me. While you're busy saving everyone else...maybe she'll save you.'
George squeezed Edgar's hand hard. Edgar squeezed back. 'Goodbyes aren't so bad, George.'
He let go, then reached down to the bunk below and not too gently shook Francis awake.
'Time's wasting, young lady.'
'Fuck off,' she moaned, half-asleep still. Edgar and George shared a smile. Edgar figured there were worse ways to say goodbye.
*
The seven men who would stay, waiting for death in whatever form it chose did not complain. They didn't cry, didn't plead. Francis waited for one to snatch them back, to drive a knife into one or all, insane and wild with iron and steel.
The Dead Boy Page 21