Ascent

by Walker, Luke

  Far away, she heard Kelly calling her name, and from even further away, she heard herself crying for Kelly to run for her life.

  The others were coming closer. The lift doors continued to smack together, a mouth eager to chew and bite and tear.

  “Alex.”

  It was Kelly somewhere on the far side of the floor, lost with Dao beyond the mass, and there was literally no way through. The only way out was behind.

  Crying, body enveloped by pain, Alex staggered across to Simon, who hadn’t moved from the wall.

  “Move,” she panted, unable to find the breath or strength for anything more.

  He made a noise that was little more than an animal’s whine before death took its life.

  “Come on.”

  From its foundations to its highest window, Greenham Place shuddered. The tremor sent the milling bodies to the floor and pushed Simon off the wall. Alex had chance to see Dao and Kelly running through a door beside the cash office, and chance to see the smashed hole in the entrance which let in the blasting heat. Already, the strongest and most able of the cooked people were beginning to find their feet. Already, they were turning back to her and Simon.

  Injured arm against her stomach, bleeding from a dozen scratches, Alex ran for the door leading to the stairs. Twisting at the last second meant her shoulder took the impact instead of her wounded arm. The doors flew open, crashed into the walls, and began to swing shut. Without looking back to see if Simon followed or remained on the wall, Alex sprinted for the stairs. The second before she reached the first, someone said her name. Alex came close to hitting the wall. She managed to stop at the last moment, and turned.

  Kelly stood at the now closed doors, head down, and her hair draped over her face.

  “Kel?” Alex whispered.

  Without making a move, Kelly spoke. Her words came and Alex answered them with a shriek. Her mind trembled on the edge of letting go of all sense; she clung to rational thought with her fingertips. This could not be Kelly. Her sister had run the other way. This was not Kelly. Not, not, not, not.

  Kelly’s toneless words ran out. Still with her head down, she shuffled towards Alex, a silent shape made inhuman by its steady pace. Alex backed away, aware, on the most basic level, of Simon approaching the other side of the doors, dismissing him as she spun on her heel a second before Kelly lifted her head to reveal a face that was a gaping hole. No eyes to see her sister; no mouth to speak the terrible things she said.

  Alex hit the stairs and ran. She passed the stain left by the vision of her father, and the man came out of nothing. Air one second, a fully formed figure the next.

  It’s true, Alex. Everything she said is true.

  Shrieking, Alex reached the first floor landing and looked back.

  Her dad stood on the stairs, dressed only in bandages, bleeding from head to toe.

  It’s true, Alex. All of it. Now will you kill me, you bitch?

  Alex went over the edge.

  Chapter Forty

  Was it the sixth floor or the seventh? They definitely hadn’t come as far as the eighth. Simon was pretty sure he’d be on his knees by then. But what else was there to do but keep moving, half dragging and half carrying Alex’s limp body. He’d found her, collapsed and almost silent on the first floor landing after legging it from the sheer insanity of whatever the fuck was going on below, and no amount of yelling into her face made her move. So he’d taken her by her heavy arms, grateful he kept in shape, and pulled her to the next flight of the stairs. Then up. Then repeat.

  Now here they were, about as far as he could get them away from the dozens of people below, with their hideous burns and clothes turned into little more than baked rags. With the last of his energy, Simon dropped Alex onto one of the sofas, then fell beside her. Trembling, either from fear or exhaustion, from his knees up to his stomach and out to his arms, Simon let it flow, too weak to fight the shakes.

  “You okay?”

  Alex gave Simon no reply. Nothing he understood, in any case. She made a noise that might have been words if he dared move his head closer. He did not. Let her mumble her terror. He couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  Simon rested for a few moments, the sour smell of sweat stinging his nose. His throat ached for water. While his stomach needed food, it was much less of a demand than to slake his thirst. Find a tap, stick his mouth under it and drink until he burst. Then maybe he could think.

  Rising, Simon stumbled forward and held the wall to keep steady. For a moment, he considered peering out of the window and working out what floor they were on. There was probably little point. Whether fifth or sixth or seventh, then so what? There’d still be no help from outside. There’d still be no outside, full stop.

  Instead of looking through the windows, Simon leaned on the railing that offered a clear view all the way down to the ground floor, opening to the space in front of the lift. Nothing moved down there. If the burned people remained, they were out of sight.

  Coming up the stairs?

  He listened. All that came back was his own breathing and Alex’s soft mutters of nonsense. No steps on the stairs. No tread of feet fused into shoes and boots by searing fire. Whatever they were, they’d gone. For now.

  A gentle sound brushed his ears—something like a shout from the other side of a field, maybe. He listened for more, straining, desperate. What might have been a murmur came and went in a few moments, leaving silence in its place.

  “Kelly,” Alex said clearly.

  Simon turned.

  Alex remained on the sofa in the same position he’d dropped her. She gazed at the floor, head loose. Blood dribbled from scratches on her face, and from a finger with its shredded skin.

  “Kelly,” she said again.

  Swallowing the dry taste coating tongue and teeth, and wishing for a bottle of ice-cold water, Simon approached Alex. He stopped five paces from her and edged a fraction closer to the next flight of stairs.

  “What about Kelly, Alex?”

  Her hands danced in her lap.

  “Kelly!” Alex screamed. Simon jumped backwards and crashed into the stairwell railing. Alex stared at him but she wasn’t seeing him. Not in the least.

  Heart hammering, Simon raised both hands, unconsciously surrendering.

  “It’s okay, Alex. It’s all okay.”

  He had to hold a mad laugh inside. Okay? Nothing was okay. Not in this fucked up place.

  Alex fell silent. Her hands continued to squirm. She could have been washing them. Maybe in her head, she was.

  What the hell am I supposed to do? Leave her here? Keep going up? Go back down? And where are Dao and Kelly? Christ.

  Without further debate, Simon knew going back down was out of the question. Not without knowing where the burned people were. Leaving Alex… no. He couldn’t. That meant continuing while carrying her. Or dragging her.

  Alex made a soft noise. She’d lifted her head and stared at him. Actually at him, he saw.

  “Alex?” he whispered. “You there?”

  She made the noise a second time. It took Simon another few seconds to realise she was speaking.

  It’s true. She said it’s true.

  “What’s true, Alex? What’s happened?”

  She opened her mouth and exhaled. Simon caught the fading scent of the stinking wind that had blown them through the fire exit. It drifted from Alex’s tongue and lips, wafted towards him, dissipated into nothing a moment later. He swayed but stayed upright.

  “I knew it was true,” she muttered. “Always knew it. I didn’t want to.”

  What the fuck is she talking about?

  He crept closer to her. She giggled, sounding like a little girl.

  “Now I’ve got nothing left. Isn’t that funny?” Alex let out another childish laugh. The sound of this grown woman, with the faint lines around her eyes and her somehow comforting bulk turned into a kid, made Simon cringe. If insanity had a sound, Alex’s regressed laugh was it.

  “You’ve go
t your family,” he said. “Out there. Your daughters.” He searched his memory. Had she mentioned their names? By some miracle, both came. “Charlotte. Louisa. Your girls are out there. We find a way out and you’ve got them, Alex. Carl, too.”

  She flinched as if he’d moved to hit her.

  “I think I might be insane,” she whispered. “How about that?”

  “You’re not. Neither of us are.”

  “Then how do you explain my sister appearing down there with no fucking face?”

  The words wanted to come. She was desperate to own them and have some feeling of control, however small, over what the apparition of Kelly had said in that horribly dead voice. She wanted to hold those words and stomp them into the floor until they were nothing but the same dark stain they’d run past on the way up to the fifth floor.

  “I don’t know,” Simon muttered.

  “There’s nothing to know.” Alex gazed outside at the dead streets and road devoid of traffic. Again, the sight resembled a photo that wasn’t quite right. Maybe it was a shot that was going through edits on a computer; all the detail that made it lifelike had been removed for some reason. Maybe someone was working on the light and shadow; maybe they were fixing it even as she looked through the glass.

  Or maybe they were taking more and more from it while she and Simon stood in the dead corridor. Given enough time, it might all just disappear and they’d be left with a big nothing pressing against the wall of windows.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Alex whispered, and an explosion of anger boomed inside Simon.

  “Nothing? You’ve got nothing?” he yelled. “You’ve got the whole fucking world, Alex. You’ve got family. You’ve got a reason to keep going. You’ve got a reason to get out of your fucking bed in the morning. You want to talk about nothing, I’ll tell you.” As much as he wanted to stop his raging, it was impossible. Something had broken free inside and it meant to have its say. “Nothing is a job you know doesn’t matter, but you still do because if you stop it, you don’t have a thing in your life. Not one thing. Nothing is no family and no roots because the aunt who raised you after your mother drank herself to death died last year. Nothing is being thirty-nine and knowing you haven’t made an impact on anyone and won’t. Literally ever, Alex. And you know it’s ridiculous but you don’t know how to connect with people so you don’t bother. You’re anonymous, Alex, and it’s easier that way. It means you don’t have to try. It means you’ve got nothing, so don’t fucking tell me you don’t have something to get out of here for. Don’t fucking tell me that.”

  He ran out of words and breath. Panting, Simon held on to the stairwell while spots swam in front of his eyes and shaking rolled through his body. After long moments of quiet, he left the stairwell to join Alex. Now still, she stared ahead.

  “Alex?” he whispered.

  Blood ran from the scratches and grazes on her face. The gash in her finger was a congealed mess. Blood from the small wound stained her trousers. Whether her wrist was broken or simply strained, Simon didn’t know. She held it with her good hand while the sweat and the red dripped from her face.

  “Alex? You with me?” Tears ran down Simon’s dirty face. He registered the sensation and thought fresh lines of blood were cutting their way down his cheeks. Brushing or wiping them away seemed like too much effort.

  “Don’t go, Alex. I don’t want to be here alone,” he whispered. “I don’t want… ”

  Want what, Simon? Don’t want nothing? Don’t want to know you do your job and go home to your flat and the needling urge to check what people from your past are up to? That urge you ignore by drinking and wanking and watching TV without seeing what you’re looking at because if you gave in to it, then you’d find out the people from school or college or anything before today have forgotten you ever existed and even the acquaintances from long ago are nothing to you and you’re nothing to them. Nothing, Simon. That’s you. Not a fucking thing.

  From below and rising like smoke from a scorching fire, a voice spoke.

  “There’s one other thing.”

  Kelly?

  “After that business with Dean, something happened.”

  It was Kelly’s voice, clear and whole. There was nothing dead about it, as there’d been from the vision or whatever had been in the corridor seven floors below. This was her sister, human and real.

  Kelly spoke again and Alex’s world turned over and over, racing faster towards a black cliff.

  Chapter Forty-One

  They crashed through the cash office, Kelly’s injured hip catching the side of the computer monitor and sending it crashing to the floor. For a second, agony replaced all of her senses. Animal survival shoved it away and her sight returned. At their side, the tinted windows looking out to the ground floor showed a lone figure advancing. She saw him in a snatched look and didn’t have time to wonder where all the burn victims had gone. The man was naked. The man was Carl. The man was coming for her.

  Dao struck a rear door, yanked it open and yelled for Kelly to follow. They left the mess of the overturned furniture in the cash office and reached a short corridor, lined with more doors. Side by side, they sprinted for the other end. Although it should have been impossible to hear, they both caught the smash of a door opening, the unmistakable din of chairs being knocked over.

  He was in the cash office.

  “There.” Kelly pointed to an open set of glass doors. They raced through. One look around told her they were in the offices to the rear of the lift. Across the open floor was the entrance to the long hallway with the smooth, white walls that ended at the sealed fire exit. They’d come back to the same useless area they’d tried less than fifteen minutes before.

  “Fuck,” Kelly cried.

  “No choice.” Dao ran for the doors at the other side of the room. Sure she was about to vomit or pass out, Kelly followed. There was no point in going back to the fire exit, but Dao was right.

  No choice.

  They bashed through into the corridor at the same time, neither looking back and both aware of Carl’s steady approach. While Dao had no idea who the man was, he didn’t need to know. He ran from a nameless threat. He ran because Kelly’s terror was his terror.

  Bouncing off the walls, he upped his speed to its maximum, reached behind for Kelly and found her sweat-soaked hand. Streaking over the polished floor, they came to the fire exit moments later. It looked exactly as it had before the phantom wind blew them through it, and it was just as solid. Looking around was pointless. No exit and no sign of their weapons.

  Kelly held the bar. Please. Open. Let us out.

  Nothing came back. Not even a mocking laugh.

  Behind, steady steps drew closer. A voice followed.

  I’m coming for you. I’m coming to fuck you. I’m coming to take you outside and make you burn.

  “Jesus,” Dao whispered. He cringed like a frightened child. “Who is that?”

  Kelly named her horror. “Carl. My brother-in-law.”

  Somewhere still out of sight, Carl giggled. It was the sound of all madness.

  I’m almost there. Coming for you. Coming all over you.

  Kelly’s stomach turned over.

  I’m going to burn with you. All that fire outside. All that fire on your skin and in your body. You will scream like the others when you cook.

  “Leave us alone,” Kelly shrieked, and Carl’s laughter floated down the corridor. A moment later, he came into view. He paused, giving them time to see every inch of his naked body, his thick muscles, his wide chest, his jutting penis.

  Kelly’s innards seemed to recoil. It was as if they retreated to the furthest point of her body.

  “What the fuck?” Dao whispered.

  Your boy is with me, Chinaman. He is here. He has a friend.

  Carl’s mouth opened in a wide grin, exposing fangs.

  His brother is here with him, Chinaman.

  Dao wailed like a wounded dog and moved towards Carl. In those few seconds, Kelly d
iscovered a level of horror she’d never known existed. It took her thinking into a higher plane and jettisoned everything but the basic fact of their lives coming to an end. And in that understanding, all options bar one fell away.

  “Stay here,” she whispered and advanced on Carl.

  Dao tried to ask Kelly what she meant. The horror of Carl’s words robbed his voice as Kelly walked away.

  The featureless white of the walls became red, all bleeding with her blood, and Kelly understood that it was a premonition of what might occur in the seconds that followed. When Carl’s hands came down on her shoulders, and his teeth found her face, her blood would spray onto the walls before he dragged her twitching body into the flames eating Willington. Where she would burn. Where she would be given every single one of the millions of degrees of heat out there.

  “Carl.” It was little more than a croak and it would have to do. She couldn’t speak any louder.

  Kelly. I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to burn you.

  She inhaled and her gaze darted from the foot or so of space between Carl’s right hand side and the wall.

  Have to catch me first.

  She ran.

  Shooting through the little space, Kelly sprinted for the first time since childhood, when running had been a daily fact. Not running for any grander reason than the desire for speed and to feel wind lifting her braided hair.

  Hands that were more like jagged claws came down for her head and neck. They missed by millimetres. She raced back the way she and Dao had come, a single wish—leave Dao alone—come and gone in a heartbeat, because Carl was coming for her again. He was no longer taking his time, relishing a steady advance, but coming like a bullet. Carl stormed after her, crashing from wall to wall, making noises somewhere between speech in her head and animal grunts.

  Fucking Kelly stop you bitch you fucking whore I am going to burn you fucking stop right now bitch bitch fuck bitch.