by Matt Stark
Sam nodded – they both knew that there were no alternatives for the human race. But he didn’t need to say it.
Sam looked around at the tired faces in the small suburban London garden. Lucy, Suzie and Peter. Despite everything they’d managed to find a path. None of them were perfect but they would give the future their best shot – maybe it would work. But there was one fly in the ointment. Craig Glaser. Sam had come to a decision. It was an ugly compromise but still it worked. The hunger for revenge in him was at least partly satisfied, but he wouldn’t stoop to Glaser’s level and he wouldn’t ruin his daughter’s image of her father forever by killing him in cold blood.
He was going to banish him. An old- fashioned punishment – but one that seemed strangely fitting for Craig’s crimes.
Sam turned to Craig. He’d been silent since Sam palmed him away, as if he knew interrupting would do him no good. Now that Sam looked at him he seemed like a schoolboy waiting outside the headmaster’s office for detention. He was beaten. But his eyes still burned with a hate that Sam knew wouldn’t go away. And that confirmed he had made the right decision.
“You have to go, Craig. Right now.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. I never want to see your face again. A long way from here preferably.”
Of course this was mostly bluff. Craig still had his powers intact.
Peter’s finger slipped inside his coat pocket. He could have killed for a drink but he wasn’t going for his flask this time. Instead of the cool steel of the flask his fingers found the smooth plastic surface of a small oval object. The device Sam had fitted under his skin was an earlier, more stable version of the object Peter now held in his hand. This version had the monitoring capabilities stripped away: it wasn’t a bug. Instead its other features – blocking telepathic transmissions – had been built upon, extended and, Peter hoped, greatly enhanced. Enough to block even the most powerful post-human powers.
Craig still had his powers intact. He could still fight back – and Sam had no idea if he or anyone could beat him. So far it seemed he was indestructible. But Sam wasn’t relying on beating Craig’s power. It was his mind he was interested in. Craig was he knew, deep down, a good man. He didn’t want to kill senselessly. He just wanted justice – he wanted his people to serve. And now they could. Sam hoped Craig would accept what he, Sam, had done – had given post-humans their best and only chance at a future.
Craig put his hands on his hips, cocked his head and stared at Sam for a very long moment. Sam could almost hear the cogs in his brain turning, weighing up his options much as Sam had just done.
“You know I could fight. And I don’t think anyone could beat me.”
Sam’s mouth went a little dry and he felt the tension rack up in those watching like string being pulled taut. Had he miscalculated?
“I’d try,” he said, clenching his hands. “And I wouldn’t stop until one of us was dead.”
Craig held Sam’s eyes for what seemed like forever. Finally he looked away, ran a hand through his scraggly cave-man beard then looked back at Sam. There was a half-smile on his face when he did.
“I think you probably would, Sam.”
Craig looked at Peter, Suzie and Lucy in turn, nodding slightly as if in acknowledgement or acceptance – Sam wasn’t sure which. When he got to Lucy he paused. The muscles around his eyes twitched. Lucy met his eyes seemingly unafraid now.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he said.
Nothing more. Then he turned to Jean and held out his hand, hesitantly.
She took it – Sam knew she would; she loved Craig whatever he’d done – and they turned to go. When they were at the gate Craig stopped as if he were about to turn around but moved on again, taking Jean with him.
As Craig’s and Jean’s footsteps echoed down the alleyway Peter sprang into action. He was fast for a man of his age and was out of the garden running down the alley before anyone could react.
Sam knew before the scream reached his ears, and his power responded immediately – springing from his fingers like a hungry wolf who’d been biding its time. But it was too late even for him. Peter’s knife was by this time already deep inside Craig’s abdomen, its serrated blade piercing the skin muscle and soft lining of his intestines – blood and waste from Craig’s bowel were already bursting into his abdominal cavity.
By the time Sam reached the alley Craig Glaser was already in the ground in a pool of blood. Peter was standing over him, a six-inch bloody steak knife in his hand. Jean was screaming. It was her, not Craig, that Sam had heard. She was standing over Craig next to Peter screaming over and over – like she was locked in a time loop.
As Sam ran toward Craig he felt like he was losing touch with reality. The intricate solution he had worked so hard to construct was falling apart like a house of cards. How could their new peaceful world – a world of co-existence between post-humans and norms – begin with a murder? The simple answer was that it couldn’t.
Sam reached Craig – his breath coming in ragged bursts that had nothing to do with physical exertion. Some part of his mind – the intelligent aware part – was screaming at him. Something is wrong. It shouldn’t be like this. But even as he looked at Craig lying in his own blood – dying – he wasn’t able to see what was wrong.
He fell numb – drugged – almost like he was out of phase with the world. Maybe it was because he’d made so much effort to fix things and had failed so badly that he just had nothing left.
Craig’s chest was rising and falling like a bellows now – his eyes, still half open, were glazed. The life was draining out of him. But Sam, it seemed, wasn’t able to move until he’d worked out what was wrong. He had to understand what the voice in his head screaming at him was saying.
He shouldn’t –
He shouldn’t be –
He shouldn’t be dying.
He shouldn’t be fucking dying.
The stupid truth slammed into Sam like a tonne of bricks. Craig was supposed to be invulnerable. He had healed himself time after time when Sam had broken every bone in his body. He hadn’t aged in ten years and was unlikely to, from what Sam had seen. He was to all intents and purposes immortal. Yet when Peter Stone stabbed him with a kitchen knife he hadn’t healed.
Now that he had his answer – although he didn’t understand it – Sam’s joints unlocked. He grabbed Jean’s arm and pulled her down with him to Craig.
“Press there,” he said, pushing Jean’s clammy hand – hard – into the centre of Craig’s abdomen where most of the blood seemed to be coming from. Craig didn’t respond to the pressure – which was not a good sign. But Sam carried on anyway –what else could he do?
He bent over Craig, put his lips over Craig’s, then blew into his lungs but instead of the soft sound of air filling Craig’s chest he heard a high-pitched wheeze – the type made by a punctured tyre. It took him less than ten seconds to find the puncture wound on Craig’s chest. He was about to plug it and try again when he found a second and a third.
He looked back at Craig’s eyes – his pupils were large and black and dead.
The End
Epilogue One
Sam hugged Lucy, catching her as she ran at full pelt to meet him halfway to the New Millennium Post-Human Centre. It was a bit of mouthful and didn’t have quite the catchy ring to it that he’d have liked but it did the job in describing what they were all about pretty well. Lucy had her arms around his neck so hard he could hardly breathe and he hugged her back tight. It had only been six months since he’d thought he’d lost her twice over and part of him still hadn’t gotten over it – he guessed it was the same for her and Suzie. For the first month or so after Craig’s bloody death and everything they had all been through they were walking around like zombies – numb. At first Lucy had had nightmares (Sam had been having them all along but he didn’t want the same for his daughter), but thank God they’d stopped after a couple of months. Now she behaved as if her abduction and burial – Sam
couldn’t say or think those words without shuddering – were just a dream. In fact she never spoke of them.
Sam put Lucy down unhooking her from his neck, and smiled. The evening sun was shining on her blond hair. She looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Sam looked up to the Post-Human Centre beyond. Peter had been as good as his word and stuck to the bargain they’d agreed upon. In truth he had no option. Sam had learned now to control his power – the telepathy, the telekinesis, the lot – and he could have, if he wanted to, brought the whole of Vauxhall House down around Peter’s ears. But Peter seemed to accept their deal, not with resignation but enthusiasm. The Dome was converted quickly to a makeshift field hospital. The post-human prisoners were moved out of Vauxhall House into the Dome and the best medical and surgical experts along with the equipment they needed was brought in to treat them. Many of them would never fully recover from the butchery they’d received – but Sam was determined they shouldn’t be abandoned.
“Let’s go and meet Mummy,” said Sam, tickling Lucy’s side. “Maybe we can persuade her to knock off for a while and join us for a quiche in the restaurant.”
“Urrhhh,” laughed Lucy. “Quiche is disssgusssting.”
As they walked up to the Dome Sam gently grabbed Lucy, and tickled her side making her wriggle about.
“You know you should eat healthy food.”
“I’d prefer a cheeseburger and chips,” she said, still squirming.
“We’ll see what Mummy says,” replied Sam, giving her a rest from the tickling torture and taking her hand.
As they walked toward the centre with the setting sun on their backs Sam let his mind wander. Things had gone well over the last six months – very well. The post-humans’ existence was made public. That could have been a disaster – it could have sparked a mass panic but it hadn’t. Peter got in a PR expert to manage it. The trick was, he said, to see the opportunity not the risk. And fortunately some of the post-humans had developed healing abilities like Craig had. Their ability to heal themselves was nowhere near his level – but healing others, well, several of the post-humans who’d been rescued from Vauxhall House excelled at that. They were like modern-day miracle workers. Cancer, emphysema, broken bones; it didn’t matter what it was – given enough time they could cure it.
And selling that was an easy job. There were TV adverts – posters in every major city in the world. Breaking the news to humanity that they weren’t the last word in evolution – but quickly following up with the promise of the end of disease and suffering. Who wouldn’t support that? The only problem of course was resources. Each healer, as Lucy liked to call them, could only cure so many people a day and so far there were less than half a dozen healers in the centre. New post-humans were turning up each day, encouraged by the worldwide publicity. But the demand for their services was huge. Still, that meant most humans supported any program that fostered post-humans and encouraged them to develop their abilities. It was a win-win situation.
Sam and Lucy walked through the glass doors into the Centre’s reception area and made for the gym. It was 6 p.m. and for Suzie that would be judo time. It wasn’t just post-humanity that seemed to have a new lease on life. Suzie and Sam had as well. Suzie had spent many long nights with Sam going through old photo albums and watching old videos from their time before Beijing. At first, although he’d enjoyed spending time with her over a glass of red wine and a nice meal, he hadn’t been able to remember much. It wasn’t as if he had no memory if his pre-Beijing life. He’d had that download, as he liked to think of it, from Craig – but there had still been very large black holes in his mind where important life events should have been. But little by little with Suzie’s help he’d remembered more and more. He’d never get it all back. He’d had to accept he’d lost some memories for good. Sam let out a long breath. He felt as if years of tension was being released all at once – bleeding out of his muscles and skin. But he had enough. And he had people who loved him – a family. And a new life. And he wasn’t about to fuck it up.
Epilogue Two
Craig woke with start and took a sharp violent breath into his sore lungs. He’d never really thought of lungs being sore before but that’s what his felt like. Before he could dwell on that he coughed. Not just any cough – not one of those tickly numbers or the wet cough that comes along with a bad cold, or even the hacking kind smoking forty a day for a lifetime gives you. No, this cough was of a different order altogether. It was a great heaving expulsion of air from deep in his painful stiff lungs – over and over and over. He might have coughed for a minute or an hour, he had no idea – but by the end of it he was back in the land of the living, which was good news for a man in his situation.
In his situation.
What the hell was his situation? Panic gripped Craig – he opened his eyes but found only blackness. Pitch blackness and stale air. The air Craig had just expelled from his lungs was rank – almost fetid. If Craig hadn’t known better he would have said it smelt like it had been sitting in his lungs for hours or days. Just sitting there. And now that rank air seemed to surround him. He could smell and taste it as it passed through his nostrils.
Something very bad had happened. Craig didn’t know what yet but he did know it was the worst thing he could have imagined. He shook his head. No, that wasn’t quite right. Part of his mind knew exactly but didn’t want to share that knowledge with the rest of him. Because it was just too damn scary. Well, that was nice, thought Craig – but he needed to know what the fuck had happened to him and where he was.
And he would. Because despite his mind’s efforts at self-protection, information was coming in thick and fast now. Sensations mostly. Pain here, stiffness there and cold. Cold everywhere.
Craig licked his lips and deliberately searched his mind for some bloody answers. But the protective part of his mind didn’t want to give them up yet. Whatever had happened must have scared it to death. Craig laughed at that – just a little chortle. He didn’t know why but it seemed very funny.
He knew what he was going to have to do. But that damn self-protective instinct of his was trying to distract him. He was going to have to move. Movement is the key. Movement is the key, his mind sang, still playing its game of hide and seek with him.
Then Craig thrust up his hand fast – so suddenly whatever instinct or inhibition he had inside him didn’t have a chance to stop him. It recognized what he was doing but too late – and Craig felt its anguish and heard a moan that he knew had come from his own lips as his hand struck a hard dull surface a few inches above his head.
He moaned again. He knew where he was now. He knew exactly what had happened and who had done this to him – but some stubborn part of his mind was still refusing to let him see, like a conjuror with something behind his back.
As Craig traced his hand along the granulated, ridged, yet slightly giving surface his stomach tightened and the defences his mind had put up around the truth fell away. He was in a coffin. He’d been buried. Images flashed though his mind one after another, so fast they almost overwhelmed him. Peter fucking Stone had stabbed him – over and over. He’d wanted to make sure Craig didn’t come back. Craig felt the knife now as he saw it rise and fall again and again – driving into his chest, piercing his lungs. Then into his abdomen, cutting his guts to shreds and allowing faeces and blood to burst into his abdominal cavity. The first few cuts would have killed any man – but of course Craig wasn’t any man. He was a superhuman. Almost immortal. Certainly a few stabs from Peter Stone’s kitchen knife shouldn’t have bothered him at all. He could after all heal himself in the blink of an eye. He should have been able to seal up the puncture holes in his lungs and gut just as easily as a norm might stick Lego bricks together. Then he would have got up, grabbed Peter and strangled the bastard. The first of many more norm deaths. And even though he saw Peter die now in his mind’s eye – he knew the man was still alive and well. And he felt fear stir in his guts again. He’d become used to being alm
ost immortal, and losing that power was terrifying.
Why? How?
He didn’t know. The smile he remembered on Peter’s face as he drove his knife into Craig, and the fact that he even tried, told Craig Peter did know. That he’d planned it somehow. But that didn’t matter anyway. Whatever the reason, Craig had lost his powers – and Peter Stone had taken advantage and gotten rid of his worst enemy. He’d killed him – Craig was sure of that despite knowing that he was thinking now. He wasn’t in heaven, that was for sure; and hell – well, he never was a believer. No, he was on Earth – alive. But he had been dead.
He shifted his leg trying to relieve the discomfort building up there – and immediately regretted it as a charley horse grabbed his calf muscle and squeezed. He breathed through it for a minute – wishing there was room for him to bend down and dig his fingers into the muscle. But there wasn’t much room in a coffin, so he bore it.
Suddenly panic hit him and he reached up and banged on the wooden lid. His fists made dull slaps as they hit the wood. He banged over and over until he was exhausted. He stopped for a moment then started again – screaming although he was hardly aware of it.
“Let me out. Let me the fuck out of here.”
Finally he stopped, His body couldn’t carry on forever. He slumped back flat in his coffin and took a deep breath of stale air. Then in that brief moment of relative calm another thought occurred to him. He was alive. He’d been buried after Peter stabbed him. But now he was alive. There were two enormous puzzles right there.
First: he had been dead. He was sure of that. So he’d come back to life. He shook his head putting aside the craziness of that statement – healing was one thing but resurrection another altogether. The second was that he was breathing. No way was there enough air in this damn coffin to sustain a man for more than an hour, but – and again he was sure of this – his internal clock said way more time had passed since he was put into his box.