The Last Days

by Andy Dickenson

  ……….

  Sir Wilfred Justice pushed through the plastic partition of a dirty corridor, Jon Way following behind. “How’s your bairn doing, Jon?” the sheriff asked.

  “There’s little change. In fact, if anything, her coma’s deepening. Her vital signs are fine, her breathing’s normal but Serena thinks she’s, well, she thinks her soul is missing.” Jon sighed, “I must say, I’m not too happy you’re dragging me away from her like this.”

  “I know, I know,” Sir Justice looked back. “Hopefully this won’t take too long.”

  Jon Way nodded. “So, have you any idea what happened?”

  Sir Justice led the magician through another opaque rubber door, the plastic grating against breezeblock walls as they slipped past. A steady hum of whirling fans could be heard in the distance. Bare crystals lodged in the crumbling bricks lit the fortress passageway.

  “The boat’s just splinters. Whatever it hit, it hit hard,” Sir Justice said. “It looks like one of the sewage pipes might have broken off and sprang to the surface, the ice did the rest. But I donnae know, I’ve never known the pond to freeze up so quickly, have you?”

  Jon Way shook his head, his eyes impenetrable behind his mirrored spectacles.

  “Well anyways, my guess is someone’s been messing about in the sewers, and that caused the pipe to break. Either that or the sudden drop in temperature was too much for it and it just cracked,” the sheriff stopped. “But do you know what she was doing out there, Jon, and why so late?”

  Jon Way looked down, and for a moment Sir Justice could see his face twitching below the shades. “No, I’m sorry. We’ve been having some problems lately but…” the magician’s demeanour shifted and he grasped the sheriff’s arm. “But thank you, Wilfred, for saving her.”

  Sir Justice tried to smile but it quickly turned into a cough. He began walking again. “Wasnae just me,” he said when he’d recovered. “I reckon the whole city got in on it. Which brings us here,” and he brushed through a final plastic door before entering the gatehouse. “Seems like the boating lake wasn’t the only centre of activity last night.”

  Tucker stood slumped against a dusty compression chamber. He had already donned an anti-contamination suit, similar to the ones worn by the wardens, except he had strapped his sword around the suit’s shapeless waist so it ballooned about his chest and legs.

  Sir Justice regarded the boy with an air of mild irritation. “You look like the bloody Michelin Man,” his voice boomed around the large, dank room, mostly empty except for the wardens’ equipment.

  Jon Way betrayed a smile, “Wilfred, as if he’s going to remember that?” he said quietly.

  The sheriff ignored him. “Mister Tucker, I thought I told you there was no need to wear those suits in the burial mounds. Everything’s dead out there, remember? Including the plague.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you say.” Tucker ran a flat comb through the tight curls of his hair, his lunar helmet tucked under his arm. “But considering the circumstances - y’know, it’s still dark and who knows what’s out there, Princess Neon’s had a mysterious accident and two people seem to have gone missing - I guess I thought I’d play it safe.”

  Sir Justice and Jon Way exchanged glances but didn’t say anything. They weren’t used to taking counsel from knights, let alone an apprentice one. However, they quietly headed over to a row of lockers and pulled out two of the suits for themselves.

  “So who is it? Who’s missing, Wilfred?” the magician finally spoke.

  “The boy’ll tell you,” Sir Justice pointed towards Tucker, “he raised the alarm, not me.”

  But Tucker barely acknowledged the gesture. Instead, he looked anxiously down at the digital panel set into the right arm of his suit. It was meant to offer all types of information – the temperature both inside and outside the outfit, humidity, air pressure – but like most of the equipment in the gatehouse it was old and broken. Only the watch worked, and even its simple LED display was busted, leaving the time almost indecipherable. Tucker translated Y.Yo as 4:46, meaning it would be dark for some hours yet. But over at Al’s Bar he knew that breakfast would soon be served. The “dead eye shift” Six liked to call it, when Albion’s night workers queued up for crispy bacon and greasy eggs.

  But she wouldn’t have gone on her own, Tucker told himself.

  Over at the lockers the two men were busy squeezing into their suits, Sir Justice struggling to get the yellowing fabric around his expansive waist.

  “Sir Justice, could we, like, hurry it up here a little?” Tucker’s foot bounced up and down as he rested it on a fan heater. “Only I’m not too comfortable with all this, y’know? Plus I’ve got places to be.”

  Sir Justice took a moment to sling his hunting rifle over his shoulder before pulling on a pair of enormous moon boots. “Shut up, Mister Tucker, and tell Mister Way here what you told me,” he snapped. “Before I shoot you and bury you along with everyone else out there.”

  “Please, Mister Tucker,” Jon Way removed his spectacles as he approached the boy, placing his head unit on and clicking it into place on a metal neck plate. “Going out to the burial mounds before daybreak is an idea none of us relish. Least of all myself.”

  Behind him Sir Justice had finished dressing and began punching codes into a terminal by a queue of wheelbarrows. Finally the gatehouse door swung open.

  “As you know my daughter is laid up in a hospital bed,” Jon Way turned to stare into the darkness beyond the door as the cold air blew past him. “And I’d rather not leave her for too long.”

  Tucker smiled nervously before putting his own helmet on. “Of course,” he said.

  The trio then marched out of the fortress of Albion and into its graveyard, Tucker telling Jon Way about the blinking lights and the communicators, all the time swinging his crystal torch across the snow covered burial plots he’d passed earlier. Now they seemed to swim out of a mist that clung to the floor like a thin tide. He kicked at the fog and watched it climb into the night, tracing the path of his boots.

  “Anyway,” he finished. “I traced the open signal from the communicator out here.”

  “Which brings us to you, Jon,” Sir Justice added, clapping his gloved hands together in the cold. “Do you think you could find it for us?”

  Jon Way bent down and scooped up a handful of mist. It swirled at the conjurer’s touch, slowly transmuting into travelling shapes to do his bidding, becoming eyes where he couldn’t see. Once solidified, they flew off in the form of three white arrows, chasing one another across the graves.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” the magician said before almost stumbling into a cross himself.

  “Here, let me help you,” Sir Justice whispered, taking his arm. “So, Mister Tucker,” he said more loudly as he turned his attention back to boy. “How’s your friend doing?”

  “What, Six?” Tucker answered, unsure of what to say, or, at least, what Six would want him to. “She seems to be getting better,” he decided. “Gave me a right good kicking in, er, training earlier.”

  “London, Mister Tucker, has she remembered anything more about London?” Jon Way joined in, shrugging off the sheriff’s aid.

  “Not really,” Tucker lied, a crystal shifting in his pocket. “I mean, I know you were only trying to help yesterday, but I think it’s going to take her a long time to get over Lord Truth’s death, let alone the other knights. She liked them a lot more than me.”

  Tucker felt awkward once those last words had left his lips as though, to say as much, to speak ill of his fallen comrades, was almost like a betrayal.

  “It was beautiful in there, Parliament,” he added finally. He knew they were waiting for him to say more. The words just slipped out.

  Jon Way and Sir Justice glanced at each other quizzically from within their lunar helmets. “Beautiful?” the sheriff asked.

  “One of the most beautiful things I had ever seen,” Tucker nodded slowly. “The sun shone straight through the br
oken roof. All these exotic birds had roosted in the beams and plants had begun breaking through the floor, crawling up the walls of the House of Commons. There were even flowers, poking through the seats. I was the first one in there, y’know? I was the scout.”

  “And then what, Mister Tucker?” the sheriff asked.

  Tucker watched as a raven flew over the dark graves. “And then the others came along and Lord Truth ordered me to go out and guard the gateway,” he shrugged. “Just as I’ve told you a million times.”

  “And then?” Jon Way added.

  Tucker sighed. “And then I lose radio contact, and the next thing I know Six is running towards me, screaming at me to jump back through the gate. And the place just explodes...”

  “It blows up?” the magician checked him.

  “Literally, like the whole of Westminster explodes, not just Parliament, with Lord Truth and all the knights inside. What could I do? I mean, it was all I could just to get Six through the gate. I wish I could have done more, I wish...”

  Tucker controlled himself, his back straightening. “I mean we had an important mission, you know? We failed.”

  “That mission never had a chance, boy,” Sir Justice replied. “That wasnae your fault.”

  “Sorry?” Tucker looked up at him, taken back by his sudden candour.

  “It was a trap, Mister Tucker.” Jon Way added simply.

  Tucker felt like he had been slapped. No one had ever said this when he was at the council. “How do you know that?” he croaked.

  “How else could Lord Truth be killed so easily?” Sir Justice shrugged.

  Tucker stopped to study the sheriff’s face. In the lights of his head unit you could see the crimson-cobwebbed patches that prickled his skin, culminating in the major boil on the side of his nose. It was the kind of face, Tucker thought, you could trust, even though it belonged to a part-time executioner, and a generally grumpy one at that. But could I trust him with Six’s story?

  “Please,” Jon Way beckoned. “Let’s not linger here.”

  The three stomped on, their black silhouettes varnished by the frozen moon.

  “Let’s be honest here,” Sir Justice shivered. “Your boss was, according to popular opinion, either our great Saviour or a giant, sanctimonious bell end from outer space. But whatever he was, he wasnae normal.” The sheriff wheezed as they climbed deeper into the mounds. “He could probably raise the dead himself, all I know, so to kill him and all your friends would have been no accident. The question is, Mister Tucker, who was behind it?”

  “Meaning me and Six?” Tucker answered defensively.

  “Meaning anyone,” Sir Justice coughed again. “But whether you’re involved or no’, you’re both in danger now.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” the sheriff repeated. “Because if you did kill him then others will want revenge, and if you didn’t, then someone else did, and you and your little girlfriend are the only surviving witnesses. You need to tread carefully, Mister Tucker.”

  “We’re getting nearer,” Jon Way interrupted in a hushed tone but Tucker was barely aware of it.

  Holy guacamole, they think Six is right, they think there was a plot to kill LT, he thought. And we’re next!

  An owl swooped down onto a rat scampering though the mist. The bird bit into its neck, gathering its meal in its beak before rising back into the black sky.

  Am I even safe out here with them? Doesn’t this make everyone a suspect? Tucker stared in the direction of the magician. He could be reading my thoughts right now. He could have been in my head from the start, he could have been...

  He felt for the red crystal below his suit, lifting it from his jeans pocket, thumbing it between his gloved fingers. It popped out, rolling down his trouser leg and out into the snow.

  Crap.

  The sheriff’s heavy hand clapped his shoulder. “Do you believe in Jesus, Mister Tucker?” he implored.

  Tucker almost jumped out of his skin. “What?”

  “That cross you wear around your neck would say you do,” the sheriff said simply.

  Tucker said nothing. It was the last question he’d expected to hear. He considered, for a moment, the small pendant hanging under his t-shirt. It was the only possession his parents had left him, his only link to his past. But what did that matter now?

  “Stop it, Wilfred,” Jon Way admonished the sheriff. “You know the vagaries of religion are no match for the certainties of science and...”

  “I’m not talking about religion,” Sir Justice interrupted, shaking his head. “I’m talking about...”

  “Wait,” the magician stopped to find his magical sprites dancing over a clearing in the snow. “There’s something here.”

  Tucker panned his flashlight across the ground and felt his stomach lurch. From the darkness the beam touched naked colour, passing over exposed ribs, ripped skin, broken bones, burst organs. And then a man’s face locked in a twisted scream, his jaw wrenched open.

  All around them, a river of sticky blood was seeping into the snow.

  Tucker’s hand leapt instinctively to his mouth and bounced off the lunar visor. “Cheese on a stick.”

  Sir Justice had already drawn his rifle. He played it with his own torch over the surrounding graves, their markers snapped and scattered, draped in bloody entrails.

  “You can take your science and your magical mumbo jumbo and you can shove them all up your clever arse, Jon,” the sheriff mumbled quietly, his torch light resting once again on Tom the warden’s dead body.

  “Because by my reckoning we’ll all be meeting our father in heaven before this is over.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  PRINCESS Serena looked down at her daughter as she lay in her hospital bed and the girl’s empty eyes stared back at her. Her small body was surrounded by tubes and bleeping instruments: a heart monitor ticked off beats to her side, a drip fed nourishment to her veins and small suckers leached her skin. But Neon Way lay oblivious to all these things and, after a time, so was her mother. The elder princess just continued gazing into her daughter’s eyes, which didn’t seem white to her anymore but translucent. Like pools of water encroaching on the wells above her cheeks.

  She’s vanishing, Serena thought, tears rolling down her chin. I’m losing you Neon, where are you going?

  It had been a long time since Serena had watched her daughter sleeping. It had been weeks since the two princesses had even shared the same room. And now, to hear oxygen gurgling through pipes lodged up you nose, machines keeping you alive…

  But appearances are deceiving, Serena thought, as the bird, Buckley, fluttered onto a cupboard beside her. The physical body was a mere shell, it was not important. It was the soul that mattered. Hers had a companion, the falcon. Neon’s was lost.

  No, it wasn’t the body in the bed Serena needed to worry about, at least not yet. Because Neon Way wasn’t really there at all.

  “So where are you, Neon?” the princess repeated.

  A door crept open behind her. “Jon?” she asked.

  “Sorry honey, just me.”

  Serena felt the arms of her father enfold her and she turned to bury her face in his wrinkled neck. The King was wearing a mauve and turquoise tracksuit. It hung off his frame like a sack. “How’s she doing?” he asked.

  “She’s getting worse. I’m losing her.” Serena whimpered.

  Jason King stuttered. “Well, where’s Jon? Shouldn’t he be here?”

  “Sir Justice needed him,” Serena raised her head, her damp cheeks leaving a wet patch on his jacket. “I told him to go. He knows he can’t reach her, not like this. And if he can’t, who can? Oh daddy, I’m so frightened. What the hell was she doing out there?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” the King smoothed wet strands of hair from her brow. “But we’re gonna find out.”

  “You’d better come in,” he said over his shoulder.

  One by one, the Seekers shuffled into the room, each carrying their crystal he
lmets. Some sat cross-legged on the floor, others perched on different beds or stood silently, until they had circled Neon, her mother and grandfather.

  “Father, how could you?” Serena started.

  The children placed the metal and wire contraptions on their heads and closed their eyes.

  “Shhhh,” the King countered, simply pressing his finger to her lips.

  But Serena was adamant. “Father this isn’t the time! This mix of science and the mystic the children are playing with...”

  “This isn’t the time for old arguments,” her father insisted. “Right now we have to do all we can to help Neon.”

  “And you think this is helping?” Serena screeched.

  The King reached out to her again, delicately stroking her face with his withered fingers. Serena flinched but couldn’t back away, like a frightened bird tethered to its keeper. Buckley shivered.

  “When we first came here,” the King said quickly, “your mother and I, we dreamed of a true evolution. A new society that respected the spiritual as well as science. One that would embrace her Aztec heritage, your heritage, away from the bondage of a secular world. To work together with technology, Serena, yet not be enslaved by it.”

  The King looked about him as the older boy with curly hair, Tim, made his way around the room, plugging the helmets together. “These children,” the King remarked, “including Neon, they are the product of that process. They don’t worship technology, Serena. They own it.”

  The disabled child in the romper suit, Oric, crawled forward. He regarded the adults through his thick glasses and sucked his thumb, a trail of dribble stringing between his hand and nose. His thoughts sped around them in a heartbeat, resounding like a cymbal clash in their minds.

  “We will find her,” he said simply.

  Tim now stood opposite Serena on the other side of the bed. She watched him, furious, as he bent down and placed one of the helmets on her daughter’s forehead.

  “We have to,” he said, speaking aloud as he plugged the contraption in. “She is our leader.”