by Tim Weaver
In the blink of an eye his head was at my ear. I could feel the mask brush against the side of my face. His smell. His hot breath passing through the holes in the plastic.
‘No,’ he said again.
‘I’ve got a gun against his head,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you want to take that chance?’
He moved his head back and pushed the gun in against me.
‘You’re a fucking cockroach, you know that?’
‘Put it down.’
‘You belong in the dirt.’
‘Put the fucking gun down.’
The gun pressed harder against the back of my head, digging in against the curve of my skull. It felt like he was weighing up his options.
‘You’ve got three seconds,’ I said.
The gun didn’t move.
‘One.’
Nothing.
‘Two.’
I cocked the Beretta.
‘Thr—’
With one last push of the barrel, I heard glass crunch beneath his feet as he stepped back, the gun going with him.
I swivelled, so hard Alex almost stumbled, and looked across at Legion. He was standing in the doorway. The gun was at his side, a second one — what looked like a SIG Sauer P250 — in his belt. His sleeves were rolled up, the tattoos creeping out from underneath. His eyes were fixed on me, peering through the eyeholes. Blinking slowly. His tongue came through the mouth slit, and moved along it, making a cutting sound on the plastic. There was some blood close to his right shoulder, but he hardly seemed to notice.
‘Put it down,’ I said, nodding at the submachine gun.
He didn’t move.
‘I’ll put a bullet through his face, I promise you that.’
He looked at me, at Alex, then back to me. Maybe he didn’t believe I would kill Alex. If you’re a killer, you wear it — like a cut that doesn’t heal. He could see I didn’t wear it. But maybe he’d heard about what I’d done to their people before. So he knew, if I had to, I could kill. If it came to that, it would be them before me.
‘You want me to start counting again, you fucking freak?’
His eyes narrowed inside the mask. Then his hand opened and the submachine gun dropped to the floor. Glass scattered as it turned over and came to rest.
‘Now the other one,’ I said, my eyes snapping to his belt.
He paused, then placed a hand on top of the SIG. His fingers slid down the side, like insect legs, one moving in against the trigger, the others in around the grip. Wriggling. Long, grey stalks; dirt and blood under the nails. I shifted the Beretta sideways, from Alex’s neck across his shoulder. I aimed at Legion’s head. His eyes flicked down to the gun and back up to me, and he slid the SIG out from his trousers, held it out in front of him and dropped it to the floor. It hit the ground with a clunk.
‘I can taste your fear, cockroach.’
I nodded, as if I barely heard him. But every word out of his mouth was like the end of a knife blade. He lived off any flicker of fear. Even with both guns on the floor, he was still dangerous.
‘Kick the guns over here.’
I expected to have to repeat myself but he did it straight away. That instantly worried me. Everything else had been a struggle. Now he was sending his weapons across to me, out of reach, without even pausing for thought.
‘Put your hands behind your head.’
He snorted, and instead moved his hands up to his mask and slowly lifted it away from his face. I felt Alex shift a little in front of me. The devil tossed his mask away. He blinked, his eyes fixed on me, and ran a hand across the top of his shaved head. And then he smiled, his mouth widening, his tongue pushing through his lips. Running across them. Tasting them.
‘I’m gonna eat you.’
‘Put your hands behind your head.’
He smiled again. But he did what I asked, sliding his hands behind his head. Too easy again. Something was up. I’d forgotten something. Missed something. What had I missed?
‘Turn around,’ I said.
Legion picked up on something in my voice. Another smile broke out on his face. ‘What’s the matter, cockroach?’
‘Turn around.’
‘You scared?’
‘Turn around.’
His eyes widened, like huge holes in his head, sucking in the darkness from the room. I felt myself losing control.
‘You sssssssssscared?’ he said quietly, menacingly.
‘Shut up and turn arou—’
He swung then, a sudden bloom of movement, pulling a knife out from somewhere behind his back. The handle was small, but the blade was long, slightly curved, glinting even in the gloom. He brought the knife out in front of him, a blur that moved from his waist, and slashed across Alex’s chest. Alex stumbled backwards, knocking me off balance.
Legion lunged forward again, further this time, flipping the knife and jabbing the butt into Alex’s temple. Alex staggered sideways, his legs giving way. I could see a long, thin, shallow tear in his clothes. There was no blood, but it had torn though his top like paper.
He moved in a third and final time and punched the knife’s handle into the side of Alex’s head again. Alex lost his footing completely and tumbled to his left — pulling me down with him. At first, as everything shattered around me, I couldn’t understand why he’d done it. Why he’d grabbed me too. Then, as he crashed to the floor and rolled over on top of me, I could see what he was doing. He was protecting me. Legion couldn’t go through him.
He came towards us, the knife out in front of him. I was still too close to Alex for him to get careless, so he stabbed the blade into the floor next to my ear. Trying to force a reaction movement from me, away from Alex. But I couldn’t move. I was trapped beneath Alex. He rammed a foot into Alex’s face and the back of Alex’s head hit my nose — a force like a hammer blow. White light flashed in my eyes. Blurring. Soundless blurring. Blood splashed on to my skin, into my mouth and eyes. Then as noise returned, Legion was rolling Alex off me, on to the floor. Alex was dazed. I looked for the Beretta, and found it: out of reach.
I could see Legion again, bent over, dragging Alex across the room. Legion’s hooded top was hoisted up across his back. Criss-crossing between his shoulder blades was a leather strap. A knife sheath was perched three-quarters of the way up his spine, empty now.
When he was done, he turned back to face me, eyes flashing. He flipped the knife, the blade now an extension of his palm, and came across the room at me.
I got on to all fours and looked for the nearest gun. It was Legion’s SIG, about five feet to my left. I threw myself towards it as he jumped on my back, his knee cracking against the base of my spine, just below the scourge marks. I hit the floor face first. We slid across the floorboards, glass scattering. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a tattooed arm pinning me down by the neck. The other raising the knife above his head.
The final act.
Suddenly, the power faded from his arms.
I inched my face further around and could see Legion looking over his shoulder. Alex was standing behind him, with a gun to the back of his head. Legion smiled, glanced at me, and released some of the pressure on my neck.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Let him go,’ Alex said, sounding dazed.
‘What are you doing, cockroach?’
One side of my face was flat to the floor. I could feel shards of glass embedded in my cheek. As I tried to lift myself up and shake them off, Legion looked down at me and pushed his knee harder against my spine. His fingers wriggled at my neck.
He looked back over his shoulder at Alex.
‘Are you listening, Alex?’
My eyes darted across the room. I had a narrow field of vision, but I could see the SIG about a foot away, level with my face. When Legion had launched himself into my back, he’d pushed us both across the floor towards it.
‘You should have been dead a long time ago,’ he said to Alex.
I moved my hand an inch away from my bod
y. Waited for any reaction. When none came, I moved it another inch.
‘I should have made you suffer.’
I carried on moving my arm in an arc, sweeping through the debris. Sooner or later, I expected the movement of my body to register, but Legion had become consumed by his venom for Alex. For the first time, he was starting to lose some control.
‘I should have sliced you open.’
Closer to the gun. Inch by inch.
‘That’s what you deserved.’
My fingers touched the SIG. I could feel the rough texture of the grip.
‘That’s what you’ve always deserved.’
I pulled the gun towards me. Worked my palm around the grip and my finger around the trigger. The SIG was in against my hand now. I could feel everything. The curve of the trigger, the weight of its casing. The finality of it.
‘You deserved to be tortured,’ Legion said, almost spitting the words back across his shoulder at Alex. ‘You’re a cockroach, just like this…’
He looked down at me.
His fingers wriggled at my neck.
I raised the gun off the ground. Bent my arm back and forced the SIG in against his stomach.
And I fired.
He fell off me, his grip releasing instantly. I rolled over and saw his hand clutching a space just under the ribcage. Blood was spilling out over his fingers. He brought the knife up, swung it at me, but the power had gone from his arms. The effort pulled his body backwards. He hit the nearest wall and slid down, the knife falling from his hand.
Dead.
I looked up at Alex. He nodded and threw the gun to the floor. He was retching; choking on the fear and adrenalin.
I dropped the SIG next to me. Slowly got to my feet. My Beretta was midway between where I was lying and Legion’s body. I went over and picked it up, then pulled out the clip.
One bullet still inside.
The one I always kept on me.
I moved across the room and used the barrel to prod the devil’s body. He shifted a little; a dead weight. The wound under his ribcage was small, but there was a lot of blood. It was spilling out on to his clothes and running down on to the floor. I reached over to him and lifted up his top. Underneath, he was wearing a thin black padded vest. Sleeveless. It looked thermal. Maybe military. There were a series of zip pockets on its front.
Inside one of the pockets I found three photographs.
One was a long lens shot of me standing outside Mary’s house, talking to her on the porch. The second was me talking to Jade outside Angel’s. The third was the photo of Derryn and me that he had stolen from my bedroom the night he had come for me. My face had been circled in red pen, over and over and over until the photograph had started to tear.
Behind me Alex moved. He was leaving the room and heading for the landing, clutching his face and limping slightly. He disappeared out of sight. After a while, I thought I could hear him crying.
I turned back. Saw Legion had shifted slightly.
And his eyes were open.
An arm came up, clamping on to my throat, closing around my windpipe. His fingers burrowed in against the skin, trying to dig deeper and deeper into my flesh. I froze. Couldn’t move. Stared down at him as air stopped passing to my head — a feeling so cold, so final, it was like drowning in an icy lake.
Pull yourself out.
I found the trigger of the Beretta.
Pushed the gun in against the first piece of skin I could find.
Take this chance, David.
I fired.
The bullet blew through his throat.
He slumped sideways, his eyes darkening even more, like the gates of hell had opened up for him. Then the devil was still.
45
Before daylight started to break, I brought the Shogun up the track to Bethany. Alex and I carried Legion out, and dumped his body in the back of the car. We stood there for a moment, staring in at him. Even as death claimed his body, his eyes still looked out at us. As powerful as when they blinked and moved behind the mask.
Next, we got Andrew. He was bigger, more difficult. We carried him, his body broken, the bones shifting and moving inside his skin. When we got to the Shogun, we dropped him into the back, and then Alex rolled him on top of Legion as best he could. When I asked him why, he said it was so that he no longer had to look at the eyes of the devil.
After that, we rounded up the people we could find — all the drug addicts and victims of abuse that had come to the farm with the promise of a better life — and led them to the living room in Lazarus.
There were twenty-two of them in all. Every one the same: healthy, but virtual amnesiacs, a few of them at the beginning of the programme and still strung out on whatever drugs they were being forced to take. They watched us as we sat them down, one by one, their expressions fixed, a few of them looking like their will had gone; as if they were dying from the inside out. As Alex and I made hot drinks and passed seats and blankets through, I started to wonder how they would ever be able to start to live again.
Myzwik was still lying on the floor of the Red Room. There was blood matted to his hair. It had congealed beneath him, where the back of his head had hit an uneven patch of concrete. When I rolled him over, I could see a hole about the size of a peach at the base of his skull. A piece of concrete, not set straight like the rest of the floor, had pierced the back of his head when he’d landed. As I moved out of the Red Room, out into the bitter cold, I realized I was now a killer four times over.
And not a single one I regretted.
The other instructors — Evelyn included — were gone. The property was deserted, and if we drove to the next village — where the tendrils of the organization spread — they wouldn’t be there either. None of them would be back. They were running now; perhaps understanding some of the desperation those on the farm felt as their lives crashed around them.
Finally, as the sun started coming up on a new day, we drove the Shogun along the coast to a cove. Majestic cliffs rose out of the sea for three hundred feet. Waves crashed on the shore below, their sound swallowed up by the wind. We’d found a couple of concrete blocks in Lazarus’ yard. At the edge of the cliff, we tied the blocks to Legion and Andrew — and then pushed both bodies off the side. They turned in the air as they dropped, and quickly disappeared in the spray. When we saw them again, they were fading into the depths of the sea, sinking further and further under. Legion sunk last, as if clinging on to his existence even after life had left his body.
Eventually, darkness consumed them both.
Back at the house, we told the group everything would be all right. They eyed us with suspicion. They’d been tied to rings in rooms that smelt of death, terrified by a killer who watched them from the dark, and nailed to a crucifix. Their memories might have gone, but they weren’t stupid. They knew this new existence wasn’t the one Michael, Zack, Jade and all the others had promised them.
Finally, when we were done, we left the farm through the main gates and headed to my car. Alex drove while I sat forward in my seat, careful not to put any pressure on my back.
Ten minutes down the road, we stopped at a payphone and put in an anonymous call to the police.
46
We stopped at a service station outside Manchester. The temperature readout inside the building said it was minus three. We sat at a table by one of the windows, looking out at a children’s play park, both of us nursing coffees. The fingers of my left hand were still wrapped in cling film. As the adrenalin wore off, I was starting to feel more: the dull ache of bones locking up, nerves over-compensating, the burn of torn flesh in and around the wounds.
In the glass, I could see people staring at us. One of us bruised almost beyond recognition, the other looking like he’d spent every day of the last six years living on the streets. I could see my injuries too — my face, my fingers — and wondered how I would explain it all when I went to a hospital. If I went to a hospital. After that, we headed out to the car, cra
nked up the heaters and disappeared back on to the motorway.
Snow started falling about twenty minutes later, coming out of the pale afternoon sky. I turned to Alex. He was driving, a fresh coffee steaming in the car’s cup holder.
‘How did you know about me?’ I asked him.
He glanced at me, then back out to the road in front of us.
‘I broke into Mum and Dad’s home and found your name and address,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’d become. A fugitive. I wanted Mum to see me that day. I let her follow me so she would believe enough, and then I prayed she would go to someone. I used to watch her when she came into London. Follow her from the train to her work, hope that one day she might stop somewhere and ask for help. And eventually she did. She came to see you. I didn’t know anything about you, couldn’t find you in the Yellow Pages, couldn’t find your number in the telephone book. That was why I went back to Mum and Dad’s place. To find out who you were.’
‘How did you get out of the farm in the first place?’
His hands shifted on the wheel.
‘One night — it was about nine months after Mat persuaded me to go to that place — I heard a voice I recognized passing in the corridor outside my room. When I went to the door, I looked out — and it was Simon.’
‘Your friend Simon?’
He nodded. ‘I couldn’t believe it was him.’
‘But it was.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was. They treated him… I’d never seen them treat anyone like that. They’d put him on a leash and were pulling him around like an animal. So, I followed them, expecting to be stopped, but I got to the end of the corridor and no one came after me. I passed beneath their CCTV cameras and no one tried to stop me. It was like the whole place had been abandoned. Normally you couldn’t breathe without someone hearing you, but I managed to walk out of the complex, and up on to the surface.’
‘Did you find Simon?’
‘No. I was too far behind him…’ He trailed off, glanced at me. ‘And I guess I forgot about him as soon as I got to the surface.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the entrance had been left open.’