The Last Days

by Andy Dickenson

  The King wondered if he could soon pass his hand straight through her head and touch the pillow below. “Why have you stopped?” he snapped. “We’ve gotta get her back!” But he already feared it was too late.

  “How can we reach her, your majesty?” Jon asked, his own eyes welling with tears.

  Oric trembled madly on the floor, his small body kicking, thrashing, his thoughts almost exploding around the room like a tempest: “She is gathering strength but we must be patient.”

  “But how? She’s disappearing!” Serena screeched before reaching out to gather the boy in her arms, cradling his oversized head as he continued to fit.

  “No! No, she is waiting,” Oric insisted.

  Slowly his convulsions subsided. The King watched as the child, who was obviously very ill, opened his big blue eyes, his glasses cracked and his clothes drenched. “She is waiting for us,” he said triumphantly. “She’s calling us.”

  The little boy smiled. “She is calling us, and she wants us to join her.”

  ..............

  Neon Way held her breath, her temples throbbing and her eyes screwed shut, until the sound of popping blood vessels filled her ears. The strain of transmitting her thoughts to Albion had become so acute Neon feared it would crack her skull clean open.

  Finally, she stopped. Her back relaxed and a breeze swept over the black oceans of the Other Worlds, nibbling at her pigtails.

  Neon opened her eyes and breathed hard. The wind has no colour, she thought, nor a shape to hold it. It’s invisible like me and soon I’ll be gone from there, her mind raced. Perhaps soon I won’t feel anything at all.

  The sea lapped over the princess’s feet and she played her toes deeper into the shore. The sand was soft and squidgy and soon the water welled up over her ankles, but it was neither cold nor hot. In the Other Worlds things had no temperature, no taste, no smell.

  Neon looked down into the rock pool beside her, at her white reflection staring back. “But at least here,” she thought aloud, “the animals can see me. He sees me, Jack Bellingham, the Pirate Prince. He sees me for who I truly am. Not like my parents.”

  “That’s because he loves you,” a crab scuttled through the pool, causing a ripple in the water to break her reflection, the message appearing on the back of its shell.

  A guppy then darted across the little inlet causing the sand to swirl in its wake, it too forming words: “Do anything for you, he would.”

  Then, at the bottom of the water, a black clam opened to reveal a hidden pearl. It caused bubbles of air to drift upwards. “All you have to do is bring your friends,” they spelt, each letter getting larger as it broke the surface.

  “I know, I know,” Neon giggled as she reached in for the precious stone. She stared at it, perfectly round, its beauty only tarnished by its birth. She was still inspecting the jewel when the Pirate Prince came skipping towards her.

  The boy’s white hair was billowing in the wind as he practiced jabs and sweeping cuts with his sword. Pivoting on his right foot, he pirouetted, as if swerving from an imaginary blow. Then he leapt gracefully over the princess and the rock pool, somersaulting before landing in the white sand.

  “My princess,” he bowed gallantly, his uniform looking as clean and fresh as it had when he first arrived. Because nothing ever aged in the Other Worlds. Nothing ever got dirty.

  “Well, did you manage to get through to your Seekers?” he smiled.

  Neon dropped the black pearl back into the water. “I think so,” she replied. She watched it sink to the bottom and nestle in some white seaweed, next to a black starfish. Even it seemed to be grinning.

  “It took a lot of concentration,” the princess continued. “But I think I reached them.”

  The Pirate Prince knelt down beside her. “Did it hurt?”

  Neon looked up into his eyes. They too sparkled like jewels - diamonds cut from bricks of coal. “Not too much,” she lied.

  “I am glad,” the prince took her hand. “Soon you won’t be able to feel pain, and you’ll be completely at one with this island. So will the others.”

  “But what will I feel?” Neon asked, a little concerned.

  The prince shrugged. “You’ll be no more ruled by the provinces of pleasure or pain than the wind, or a plant, or me. You’ll just feel,” he paused for a moment, “better.”

  “I see,” Neon said, a crease folding over the bridge of her nose.

  The Pirate Prince gripped her hand tighter. “What did you say to them, your friends that is?”

  Neon smiled. “I told them I was here,” she nodded. “And I told them we were going to save the world.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE WEREWOLF wiped traces of a fresh murder from his lips as he staggered through the tunnel. His breathing was laboured, his wiry, powerful limbs lurching almost drunkenly, his fur stinking of sweat.

  Sniffing, he paused for a moment to re-examine his wounds. The deep cut to his side, where the silver sword had pierced him, was still bleeding. He had stemmed the flow as best he could by winding lengths of rubber tape around his sodden torso. It would help, but the monster knew that any traces left by the precious metal would stop the cut from ever healing.

  His severed claw was less of a problem. He had cauterised the stump in a fire and his fur was already returning, bony calluses growing beneath it. Soon those calluses would turn to knuckles, his skin stretch and new bones click into place. Within a night muscle would cement into fingers and his claw would return, the moon renewing his fist, just as it had his broken arm.

  “We werewolves, we are not beaten so easily, yessss?” Klaus Gravenstein grinned to himself, his matted tail wagging. But his proposition remained unanswered. It had been many hours since the Voice had last whispered in his head, giving him his orders, teasing him, cajoling him. At first the distance between them felt like a weight that had been lifted. But now he just felt lonely, and a little dejected.

  Fortunately, he had a new friend to play with.

  Six raised her head from the chains that bound her to a network of pipes. Her wet hair dangling in front of her face, a dollop of dirty brown water splashing on her greasy cheeks. “You’re looking well, darling,” she said, her eyes flickering in the half-light of the sewers. “Been busy have you? I didn’t expect you home so late.”

  “Don’t push me, girl,” the werewolf fell onto all fours and scampered over to a corner of the damp cavern. Then, climbing back onto his hind legs, he reached upwards, pulling on a rope. The sound of grating metal briefly filled the tunnel as Six rose disjointedly into the air, the chains coiling on the lead pipes above her. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry, yesss?”

  Six was now suspended in an upright crawling position, manacled at the hands and feet like a puppet on a torturer’s strings. Her red silk dress hung loose and tattered. She was soaked through, water cascading from a broken vent behind her, her bare skin covered in long scratches. “Oh please, save the clichés,” she said. “Besides, I’ve already seen you when you were angry, you sadistic fool.”

  The werewolf tied the rope to a lever and shuffled over to his prisoner, his tongue lolling over the bloody division of teeth that lined his lower jaw. His red eyes blazed like two dark suns as they locked onto hers. Six blinked and tried to look away, disgusted.

  “You fought bravely at the bar,” the wolf sniffed again, his wet snout trembling above leering lips. “But do not missstake your sssurvival for a victory.”

  Six barely registered the threat, too busy trying to pull away from her captor but only sinking deeper into the web of chains. “You’re German?” she asked finally.

  The beast nodded, his one claw reaching out to touch her delicate face, lifting her chin with a razor-sharp nail.

  “My grandfather is half German.” Six closed her eyes, her muscles straining with the weight of her own body, the shackles tearing into her ankles and wrists.

  “You ssssspeak the language?”

  “No,”
Six shook her head. His foul breath made her want to gag. “No, don’t be silly. No one speaks any language but English anymore. Things are difficult enough as it is.”

  “How pragmatic people have become at the end of the world, yessss?” the werewolf snorted. “Culture, language, compassion, all finished. You see a man with a diseassse - you shoot him.”

  “It’s not like that,” Six said defiantly.

  “It’ssss exactly like that,” the werewolf said, picking at the bullet wounds that littered his body.

  “Well,” Six struggled against her chains, “it’s a matter of survival, isn’t it? Anyway, you seem to have done all right. Somewhere inside you is the man we shot at the gates the other morning, isn’t there?”

  “Impresssive,” the werewolf laughed, his lurid smile once again betraying his bloodstained fangs. “What gave me away?”

  “Well, that great bullet hole in your temple was a big fat clue.”

  The wolf felt for the mess of scabs on his forehead and grinned. “Just another battle scar,” he said. “It hasss already healed. Your wounds, however...”

  And for a moment the werewolf looked calm, almost civilised. His shoulders loosened so the thick crest of hair on his back bristled higher onto his neck. His head dropped, the light catching his ripped ears. And then he turned on her with a roar so primal it made her marrow quake.

  “TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!” he screamed, mucus and stale blood flinging from his jaws.

  “Know? Know about what?” Six panicked.

  “London, of coursssse!” the werewolf bellowed. Standing at his full height now, he must have been eight feet tall. He towered above her.

  “London? I’ve never been there,” Six spat between gritted teeth.

  The werewolf grinned for a moment and then hit her hard across the face with the back of his claw. “Don’t lie to me, bitch.”

  The chains rattled about the cavern as Six swung madly from side to side.

  “The bomb,” the wolf screamed. “Tell me about the bomb!”

  “The bomb, what bomb?” Six was trying not to vomit with the sudden motion, her world swirling about her. What the hell’s going on? she thought. How does he know about London? How does he know about the bomb? Her eyes flickered towards a red crystal, lodged in a bullet wound in the wolf’s chest.

  But the werewolf began pacing now, like he alone was the prisoner. “Don’t play gamessss with me, girl. Do you think I was ssssent here by accident?” he fumed.

  “Sent here?” Six repeated.

  This time a kick glanced off her midriff, brown nails catching on her dress as she span further into the tangled mass of chains. He’s just toying with me, Six thought frantically. If he wanted to he would have killed me by now. But what does he know about Lord Truth?

  “Where are the glassesss?” the werewolf raged.

  “What glasses?” Six tried to back away just as the beast’s great fist crashed into her face again.

  “REMEMBER!” he screamed. “WHO KILLED LORD TRUTH?”

  She felt a familiar ache course across her skull as her mind darkened. Six was used to being kicked, punched, beaten on, bludgeoned. Why, it was only moments after she had been attacked by that lion in London that she...

  Stop! Don’t think about it, don’t think!

  But everything was happening so fast, just like it had in Parliament. And Lord Truth, it was like he was out of control, doing things she’d never seen him do before. Frightening things.

  Stop it! Don’t think! Don’t remember!

  Meanwhile, she was stumbling, falling at every turn. Failing in her mission.

  Stop thinking!

  “You heard the man, let’s go people, move out!”

  In the blackness she could hear a memory, smell it, touch it.

  It was overwhelming.

  “You heard the man, let’s go people, move out!” Knight One said, a shining revolver in his hand.

  Six stared at the wreckage of London - the fallen masonry, overflowing Thames, the rotting skeletons and towers of twisted metal - as the knights made their way towards Parliament.

  They were not alone. Statues of statesmen, Kings and Queens surrounded them, all overlooking the fallen capital. All but Richard I, who had been beheaded astride his horse, and Cromwell, who lay buried under bricks and rubble.

  The knights crept around a bus that sat crumpled on its side under the gaze of Bodicea. Six turned to the sound of gushing water, piling down the steps of Embankment tube station.

  The churchmen and women, the few that were left, said the world hadn’t flooded, for after Noah “never again would a flood destroy the earth”. But Six knew little about that.

  Still, what had happened?

  It was the great mystery that had taxed drunken scholars ever since. Six would listen to their endless arguments in Al’s Bar. What could have happened to cut Albion off from the rest of the planet? Why had it alone been left to survive, and suffer?

  For the knights such questions were unimportant. After all, this was the world they were born into, the only one they ever knew. Still, to visit London, to witness its destruction. Six raised a pistol in each hand, not sure whether to feel alarm, or contempt for those who had come before her.

  “Tucker, you in there yet?” Knight Five spoke into her communicator, her machine gun trained on imaginary targets.

  “Yeah, I’m through,” Tucker’s voice was faint. “There’s a gap in the wall beside the east entrance with a barricade you can climb over,” the communicator crackled. “Making my way towards the House of Commons now.”

  “Good work, Apprentice.” Knight One continued tracing Tucker’s footsteps, his own boots splashing through Parliament Square towards Black Rod’s door. “I don’t mind admitting this place is freaking me out just a little. Let’s keep this tight, people.”

  “Damn straight,” Knight Two replied.

  Presidents Lincoln and Mandela watched them from the northern end of the square - the African leader had had one of his outstretched arms blown off, the remains of a tank rusting in Great George Street.

  Only Churchill had stood defiant amid the gunshots, mortar fire and explosions that had devastated his former throne. The enormous clock tower of Big Ben had toppled just metres from his feet.

  “War, huh?” Knight Two muttered behind Six, pulling his new rifle closer to his chest. “Bit messy isn’t it?”

  “Okay, I’m there,” Tucker returned, even quieter this time as the communicators began failing. “Looks like these blueprints... okay... you want me to head over... the Lords?”

  “No,” Lord Truth insisted, bringing up the rear, unarmed and resplendent in his suit. “Tucker, you stay there and wait for us.”

  “You got that, Tucks?” Knight One repeated. “Just sit.”

  Ten minutes later they had joined him, having themselves negotiated the crippled corridors of power that led to the inner sanctum of the House of Commons.

  Shattered floor tiles were everywhere, some split by plants and flowers that had broken through the foundations. Vines climbed up rain-stained walls and the sun blazed triumphantly through gaping holes in the fractured roof, much of the ceiling and balconies having collapsed. It was birds now, rather than the people, who gazed down on Parliamentary proceedings: parrots and macaws among those nesting in its rafters.

  “Man, it really is quite lovely,” Knight Five gasped as a chipmunk hopped between the front benches.

  Six nodded, checking the fresh bandage wrapped around her arm. “Better watch out for more lions though. It’s like the whole of London Zoo has moved in here.”

  Knight Three looked up from his computer pad as he sat higher on the opposition benches. “I’ve got good news for you, folks. We’re okay to breath.”

  “About time, Eddie,” Knights Two and Four answered, the latter lowering his massive gatling gun as his fingers struggled for his helmet latch. The others did the same.

  Knight Five wandered through a patch of tall posies. Her gree
n eyes glittered in the sunlight as a ladybird flew by. “I mean, it’s just incredible, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Sure is,” Six nodded, pushing her rubber facemask aside and sucking up draughts of fresh air. “Hey Tucks, any sign of chemical damage?”

  Tucker shrugged, his own mask hanging from the back of his armour. “None that I can tell. But whatever happened here it happened a long time ago, anyways,” he smiled. “Most of the destruction must’ve been caused by the same bomb that levelled Big Ben, but there’s no crater to indicate where it went off.”

  “Maybe they used rockets?” Six guessed.

  “Maybe,” Tucker shrugged again as Knight One’s hand fell on his shoulder. He turned to face his Sergeant.

  “I’m sorry Tucks,” Knight One shook his head, the lines around his brown eyes creasing. “But the boss says you’re on guard duty.”

  “What?” Tucker looked over at Lord Truth. Their leader stood oblivious to their conversation, his arms open wide at end of the chamber, the sun’s rays bouncing off his blue-grey skin. “I thought I’d done my job getting us in here?”

  “That you did, bro, and then some. So now the gateway’s gotta be a good place to be, right?” the Sergeant smiled, his teeth seeming even whiter as the shadows dappled his black cheeks.

  “What with all those lions and who knows what else slithering around out there?” Tucker moaned. “Cheese on a stick, Serge, I really wanted to get a look at this place, y’know? We’ve been researching it for weeks and I reckon I’ve got a good shot of finding that antidote. Besides, I can’t go on guard, that’s Eddie’s job.”

  “Hey, I always take guard!” Knight Three agreed as he jumped from his seat. “What’s going on, Serge? You know I always take guard. Shit!” he shouted.

  Knight One raised an eyebrow as the others stared. “Hey, you wanna argue with the big man, Three?” he asked, pointing back to Lord Truth, who seemed completely lost in concentration. Knight Three shook his head.