by Darrell Pitt
They descended into a small valley, following it until it reached another ridge.
It didn’t take long for the heat to rise. The sky was cloudless and soon the sun was beating down.
Jack took off his coat and carried it. He was thankful Scarlet had listened to Miss Bloxley. Their hats looked ridiculous, but he’d rather wear them than die of heatstroke. He began thinking about how good it would be to have a glass of water, how refreshing it would taste, how easily it would slide down his throat. He tried not to think about it, but the more he tried, the more it came to mind. Taking a break in the shade of a small tree, he said, ‘What’s that old saying? Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink?’
‘It’s actually “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink”,’ Scarlet said. ‘It’s from Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘A sailor is on board a ship at sea. That becomes cursed when he shoots and kills an albatross, a bird considered to be lucky.’ She paused. ‘His shipmates hang it around his neck as a form of punishment.’
‘They…what?’
She explained again, but Jack just shook his head, wondering if he’d started to hallucinate. ‘He has a dead bird hanging around his neck?’ Jack said. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Couldn’t he just take it off?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But it’s a type of penance. His shipmates die from thirst, but later come back to life.’
‘Oh?’ Jack said, brightening. ‘They’re zombies?’
Scarlet groaned. ‘I suppose so.’
They continued walking. Jack looked at his watch. It was just after midday. There was still no sign of civilisation, just hills that seemed to go on forever. His back was dripping with sweat.
‘Things could be worse,’ Jack said.
‘Oh?’
‘We could return to civilisation, expecting everything to be fine, but instead discover the zombie apocalypse has happened.’
‘Jack,’ Scarlet said, shaking her head. ‘Where do you get these ideas? There are no such things as zombies. How can you have a zombie apocalypse?’
‘Very easily. First the milkman gets bitten by a zombie. He bites the postman. Then he bites Mrs Magillacuddy, who bites Mr Magillacuddy,’ Jack explained. ‘Before you know it, the world has been transformed into zombie planet. The only people not affected are two adventurers returning from the desert. They’re forced to fight off a planet of zombies to survive.’
‘I don’t think we’d stand much of a chance against a whole planet of zombies.’
‘But if we survived we could eat as much chocolate as we wanted. And lemonade. And water…’
Water. He didn’t want to think too much about it.
They came over a rise. Another valley lay below, but this time it was different. ‘My goodness!’ Scarlet said. ‘A house!’
Scarlet hurried down the hill with Jack close behind. They had barely taken a dozen steps when Jack saw something move in the undergrowth.
‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘There’s—’
He was too late. The snake lashed out and Scarlet screamed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Scarlet slipped to the ground, grasping her leg. ‘I didn’t see it,’ she said. ‘Not till the last moment.’
Jack examined her. There was a bite mark just above her ankle. He quickly squeezed away the excess venom from the wound. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he looped it around her leg to slow the blood flow.
‘How do you feel?’ Jack asked.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I just need to catch my breath.’
The snake had slithered away. Jack’s first impulse was to let it go, but he might need to identify it later. Snatching up a rock, he killed it and stuffed it into one of his pockets.
Scarlet was already back on her feet. ‘Let’s get to that house,’ she said. ‘Then we’ll find the nearest town.’
‘Are you sure you can walk?’
‘We can’t stay here all day,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’
They continued down the hill. The house, an adobe cottage with a red-tiled roof, was about a mile away, surrounded by a broken fence. A dirt road led away from it.
Jack glanced over at Scarlet. She was looking deathly pale now, but still moving at a good pace. ‘Rest for a moment,’ he said.
‘Not yet,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘I can rest all I want once we reach the house.’
But Scarlet began to slow down. By the time they reached the broken fence, she was starting to weave about. ‘I just need a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘A biscuit would be nice.’
She collapsed.
‘No!’ Jack cried.
He took her pulse. It was steady, but she had broken out in a terrible sweat. She opened her eyes blearily. ‘I don’t know why people play chess,’ she said. ‘It seems unnecessarily…’
‘We’re almost there,’ Jack said. He carried her the rest of the way to the homestead. ‘Help! We need help!’ he cried.
Nothing moved at the building. Now they were closer, Jack noticed how dilapidated it was: everything in the garden had wilted or died. The front step hadn’t been swept in years. Struggling under Scarlet’s weight, he gently placed her in the shade of the veranda. The front door silently swung open, revealing an empty house.
‘Bazookas,’ Jack groaned. ‘What am I going to do?’
Checking behind the house, he found an old well, but it was dry, the sides fallen in. Returning to Scarlet, he tried rousing her by tapping her face. Her eyes were half-open, but she wasn’t seeing anything.
‘I’m not leaving you,’ he promised.
Mr Doyle had shown him how to pick someone up in a fireman’s lift. Jack lay next to Scarlet, rolled and slowly stood, her body across his shoulders. The road had to lead somewhere. Probably to a larger road. All he had to do was reach it.
He started walking.
I’ll count, he thought. One, two, three, four…
When he got to a hundred, he stopped, dropping to one knee to allow himself a rest. The sweat was rolling off him in rivulets. He should abandon his green coat. Return for it later. But he had food and some other items that might come in handy, as well as the compass. He struggled up again.
Keep moving.
Counting, he walked another hundred paces. And another.
I’ll walk five hundred steps, he thought. Then I’ll have another rest.
When he reached three hundred and fifty paces, Scarlet shifted on his shoulders and he heard a retching sound. He quickly dropped to one knee and laid her down. She had vomited.
Jack tried to ignore his aching back and sore feet. He had stopped sweating, a scary realisation. It meant he was dehydrated. He needed water. Lots of it. And Scarlet needed medical attention.
He tried running with her on his shoulders, but only lasted a few paces. She was too heavy.
‘We’re going to make it,’ he told her. ‘Just hang on.’
The road cont
inued around a hill and straight across the desert. It had to lead somewhere. He started counting again, but quickly lost count. The locket and compass rattled in his pocket. He thought of his parents. Life in the circus had been difficult, but they had always stuck together.
The heat was terrible. Only a mad person would be wandering about like this. Mad or desperate. The landscape looked identical in all directions, with only the dirt road in front of him.
I will not give up, he thought. I will not leave Scarlet. I just need to concentrate on taking one step after another.
So he continued on.
A small wind tumbled across the plain, shaking the weeds and making a low rustling sound. He could hear whispering in the wind, as if it belonging to a crowd of people.
This would be a strange place to die, he thought. Here in a Spanish desert, so far from London. But lots of people died a long way from home. Men who went to war died on distant battlefields, surrounded by people who spoke foreign languages.
I mustn’t think about death. I’m not going to die and neither is Scarlet.
But he couldn’t help but wonder how he would survive without her. Jack had never known anyone like Scarlet. She was his best friend, his confidante, his constant companion. He saw her every day and every night. At breakfast, she had the curious habit of buttering her toast to the very edges, and not drinking her tea until it was almost cold. While reading, she held the book in one hand while playing with her hair with the other. Before retiring for bed, she would listen to that annoying classical music in the Bee Street parlour, staring at the ceiling as if she could see straight through it.
‘Do you think you might get married one day?’ she had once asked him as they walked through Hyde Park in London.
‘Uh, I suppose so,’ he said, reddening. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The Primrose Society have been saying that marriage may be obsolete within a decade.’
‘Really?’
‘The expectation of marriage for life is an outdated concept,’ she explained. ‘Because people are living so much longer.’
‘It is a long time,’ Jack had said. ‘I suppose you need to find the right person.’
He had wanted to add: Someone like you.
Almost as if reading his mind, her eyes met his, and she smiled.
Jack swallowed, but his throat was parched from the heat. His back was aching terribly now and he had a headache. He needed to put Scarlet down, but he doubted he would be able to pick her up again.
He focused on the sound of the wind as he counted.
…two hundred and nine…two hundred and ten…
The whispering wind grew louder.
‘Wait a minute,’ he croaked. ‘That isn’t the wind.’
A trail of dust was cutting across the valley. A steamcar! Jack carefully placed Scarlet down and ran. The dirt track had almost reached a bigger road where an old vehicle chugged along with a man and woman inside.
‘Help!’ Jack yelled, weakly. ‘Help!’
He placed himself squarely in the middle of the road and the car ground to a halt. Jack went to the driver’s side and pointed back to Scarlet.
‘Mi Dios!’ the woman exclaimed.
Jack mimed what had happened with the snake before they loaded Scarlet into the back of the truck. Her pulse was weak, but she was still breathing. Jack almost wept. As the truck bounced over the stony road, he nursed Scarlet’s head in his lap, wiping away the dried vomit on her collar.
‘You’re going to be all right,’ he promised. ‘Not long now.’
They drove for another twenty minutes before reaching a settlement of half a dozen buildings. The man hurried to the nearest, knocking on the door. Jack lifted Scarlet from the truck.
A newcomer, a thin man wearing a neat ivory-coloured suit, pointed them inside. It was a small clinic. Jack struggled Scarlet onto a bench before falling back on a seat. The man asked him questions in Spanish, but Jack could not understand him.
Then Jack produced the snake. The man shied back for a second before realising it was dead. Then he stared at it, nodding.
The couple who had picked them up took Jack from the room. He settled into another chair and they gave him water. He thanked them before they left. Then, exhausted and filthy with sweat and dust, he closed his eyes, determined not to sleep.
I need to stay awake, he thought. I need…
Someone prodded his arm. Jack blearily opened his eyes to see the doctor next to him, his arm pointing to the doorway.
‘Scarlet!’ he cried.
She lurched towards him and gave him an enormous hug. They both burst into tears.
‘How do you feel? What do you remember?’
‘I’m fine, but I don’t remember very much,’ Scarlet admitted. ‘I recall walking down the hill. The snake biting me. Everything after that is blank.’
Jack explained how he had carried her to the next road and flagged down a car. At that moment a small girl appeared in the doorway. She could speak English and introduced herself as Rosa.
‘The snake was poisonous,’ she said. ‘She would have died if you had not brought her to the clinic.’
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. ‘Jack saves the day—again!’
‘You’d do the same for me.’
‘No. I’d just leave you in the desert.’ She gently punched his arm. ‘Joking.’
‘You know the most frightening part?’ Jack said. ‘You had a strange expression after the snake bit you—almost zombie-like.’
‘Lord help me.’
Scarlet asked Rosa about transportation back to Granada.
‘There is a bus that comes through here each day,’ Rosa said. ‘It will be here in the morning.’
‘Is there no other way?’
‘No, senorita.’
They arranged to spend the night in a small room at the back of the clinic. It contained two small beds, firm but comfortable. A local woman bought them soup and bread for dinner. They offered her money, but she declined.
‘These people have been so good to us,’ Scarlet said.
‘Most people are kind. It’s a shame that the rotters ruin it for the rest of us.’
The next morning Jack and Scarlet caught the bus back to town. Limping with exhaustion, they tumbled into the lobby of the Hotel Hermoso.
‘Jack! Scarlet!’
They turned to see Mr Doyle hurrying down the stairs. He threw his arms around them. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right? Why are you limping—’
Slumping into the plush lobby lounges, Jack and Scarlet gave an account of their adventures. Mr Doyle took them back to their rooms where they quickly showered and changed. He sniffed at Jack’s green coat.
‘We may need to send that out for cleaning, my boy,’ he said.
Jack dusted it off. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Not until we return to London.’
At a nearby café, Mr Doyle ordered fabada asturiana—a stew of sausages and beans—and Jack and Scarlet wolfed it down as they gave him more details about wh
at had happened over the last two days.
Finally, Mr Doyle sat back, forming a steeple with his fingers. ‘This is strangely reminiscent of a case involving a monkey, a loaded revolver and a washing machine,’ he said. ‘It started when…’
‘Mr Doyle,’ Scarlet interrupted.
‘Oh, yes. Well, there seems to be more to all this than meets the eye,’ he said, tossing back a piece of blue cheese. ‘I must tell you that I engaged in my own life and death struggle with John Fleming.’
‘What?’ Jack exploded.
‘He tried to kill me,’ Mr Doyle confirmed. ‘It was only through my knowledge of jiu jitsu that I was able to overcome him. Unfortunately, he escaped.’
‘So he wasn’t with MI5?
‘I’m not saying that. Actually, I believe he was with MI5, but was a double agent. I have sent a message to their headquarters in London informing them of his treachery.’ He frowned. ‘I wonder about this business involving Domina.’
‘Have you ever heard of them before?’ Scarlet asked.
‘I have. They are exactly as John Fleming described: an organisation that buys and sells new technologies. They have been implicated in several schemes involving unscrupulous Darwinists, engineering illegal biological creatures.’
‘What about…X-29?’ Jack said.
‘Of that, I have no idea.’ Mr Doyle brightened up. ‘Still, at least we have a strong lead.’
‘Which is?’ Scarlet asked.
‘The house you were taken to,’ Mr Doyle said. ‘Whoever lives there is involved in this mystery. We will approach the local authorities and seek their assistance.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Ah, Senor Doyle,’ Inspector Ruiz said. ‘I have heard of you.’
The inspector, a goatee-bearded man in the blue uniform of the Spanish police, shook the trio’s hands. They followed him into his office, a compact room with a view over a city square. Outside, a band of musicians were busking, playing traditional music as the smells of spicy food wafted through the window.