Decay Inevitable (11 page)

“How far are we from Warrington, do you reckon?” Will scanned the horizon beyond the radio masts. Rain was collecting there in dense blankets of cloud.

“I don’t know. Hundred miles?”

A hundred miles. Will struggled to come to terms with the situation, the ease with which they had been thrown off course. By now they should have arrived in Warrington; they might even have solved the puzzle of Sloe Heath. His gut churned when he thought that he might have been reunited with Cat by now or at least discovered what had happened to her, but instead he was faced with the insidious prospect of tramping across country for what? A week? Two weeks? How long could it take?

“We can take it in turns if you like,” Sadie said, brightly, skipping ahead. “Come on. Race you.”

The air freshened, seemed to crystallise around him as he began his journey. The scattered cars on the M1 sent thin streams of smoke across his path, turning the field and those beyond into an uncertain wilderness. It led away to a horizon that was black and bleak. He thought he might die somewhere up there, if they found neither help nor a road that might transport them more easily.

The ropes squeaked as they bit into his flesh and the stretcher began to make tracks in the soil. Sadie danced and spun in front of him. Despite everything, he had to smile.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN:
S
UPPLE
B
ODIES

C
HEKE WAITED UNTIL
nightfall to move on, partly because it seemed necessary but partly because she could see and smell and taste more. Often in the past week she had entertained the notion that, just as babies born in water have a natural affinity with it, she would realise an innate kinship with the dark. She wasn’t close enough to herself yet to establish it as fact, though echoes and hints of a previous (or parallel) existence rumoured it was true. Even these thoughts were less than solid. Once more she’d lost her grasp on who she was, despite Susannah’s shocked utterance of her name that morning. The knowledge she was being enveloped, or
developed
, by another presence was the only clue to reassure her that she was a different individual to the one she glimpsed in mirrors. It was a frightening ordeal, and a dying voice within pleaded for her to resist the alien intruder before, like a germ in the blood, it was digested completely. But the promise of reality was the scent of fresh blood in a pack hound’s nostrils. She lusted after it and beggar the consequences.

Around her, like wax mannequins kissed by flame, lay the people who had once been housemates of hers, though some hours had passed since she’d been able to put names to faces. Now their bodies had grown runny as soup. Simon, Susannah and Jonathan were indistinguishable from each other: a lumpen, greasy mass from which appeared tufts of hair, white knobs of bone, the odd smear of colour as a sightless eye surfaced and sank again. The how and why of her attack paled before a craving that brought her away from the window. As she absorbed this human porridge she became aware that twin appetites were being sated: basic, physical hunger but also a need for information in the genealogy of her victims. An infusion of biological codes set her limbs itching for further re-alignments, but she exercised restraint until all but their clothes had been liquefied and drawn inside her. She was able to sleep then, while she watched the night deepen, and waited for her body to relax.

Her dreams took place in a strange hinterland comprising what she as human and she as intruder recognised as home; an environment which if split into its constituent parts might prove unremarkable, but when mixed became something exciting and novel. People she guessed were related to those she had ingested flitted through her mind.

She wondered idly what the original Cheke must be like, that which was now busily being sucked away, replaced, improved upon. An image, like a mudlocked bubble, shifted from deep within, scattering these dream faces, scorching the well-known and alien streets and buildings until an oily blackness frothed behind her eyes, alive with revelation. Tissue-thin, the blockage suggested her true identity, but before her curiosity was satisfied a pain wound itself about her spine, skating brief as breath upon glass into the parts of her brain she still clung to as her own, gilding them with icy leaves which creased her into oblivion. Her own truth was not for her eyes, it would seem.

Cheke had absorbed Susannah last. She was different from any of the women with whom she had so far been in contact; glossier, more polished. Her hair was long and shiny, not prone to the knots and tangles that Cheke found worming through her own tresses. Susannah’s body was firmer, with round curves that did not dimple or crease when Cheke pressed her fingers into them. Her teeth were white and, to Cheke, almost too small to chew with; her eyes, until death spirited it away, carried an intelligent shine. Even her skin felt vibrant. More real than the stuff that packaged Simon or Jonathan. It was tight and supple in the same moment, maddeningly so.

She enjoyed Susannah, and pushed her body to the fore as quickly as possible after she was ingested. She liked the way her breasts had a solid but pliable feel to them. She jiggled them in front of the mirror and they moved with a languor that made her mouth dry. She had found pictures of men with their mouths attached to these things in magazines under Jonathan’s bed. Eyes closed, lips working the nipple, biting lightly. Sucking. The women on the receiving end liked it, this sucking. This gentle devouring of their bodies. She had studied the way their heads were thrown back, their bodies arched to offer as much flesh as possible. Fingers laced behind a head. Teeth bared. She saw pictures too of women with penises in their mouths.

She had investigated Jonathan’s body within herself, and Simon’s too. Their penises had been thin and pale, like worms, or noodles. The guard she had absorbed at Gleave’s place was better. His penis was so thick she was unable to enclose it within the ring formed by her thumb and forefinger. She could grip it with both hands and smell its gamey flesh as she teased back the prepuce. She liked its wine-dark colouring, and the way the foreskin shifted against the inner meat as she pulled and squeezed it between her fingers. She liked its soft-hard feel, like marble enveloped in padded velvet. She wondered how it might feel in her mouth. She wondered if this was something that made a woman a woman.

She touched herself in the places the men had concentrated on in the pictures but didn’t feel anything that made her want to open her mouth or close her eyes. She felt cheated. She didn’t feel as though she were as close as she might be to finding out what being human felt like. Almost being people wasn’t enough.

What could she do though? If there were any real avenues to explore, tangible opportunities, would she follow them through? Wouldn’t it be too dangerous to expose herself like that? The thing was, for every memory or characteristic of her own that she lost, a new one replaced it, slipping so seamlessly into the mosaic of her being that it was at once incontrovertibly her. It was slowly erasing who she was, all this sublimation. But it had her now, like appetite or addiction. For each reservation about her undoing there was a fillip to be found in her enhancement. It was difficult for her panic to develop muscle: no matter the origin of the She, her mind continued to assimilate information as an I, which rendered invalid the fear of her own diminishment. There’d been a sense of maturation despite the continual upheaval of brain and brawn, the re-configuration of all she was and all she might be. Strands of her that felt attached to some pre-ordained pattern now twisted and coiled with new filaments, creating a brand new weave of destiny. Like a re-programmed computer she was suddenly, if vaguely, aware of a fresh list of ambitions, needs and purposes. These involved people she didn’t yet know, though she couldn’t work out what would happen when she found them. Hopefully, as had already happened, instinct would take over when the need arose.

She felt better than she had for a long time. The rest had done her good, but she also felt brighter, more alert. For the first time, she felt confident that she could do the work that had been asked of her and she shivered with the promise Gleave had made, that she would know what it was to be a woman, a real woman, when the last of those targets had had their throats cut.

Her hands had been busy while she dreamed and plotted. She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist and turned it this way and that in the flickering flames of the candles. They really were such small teeth; too small to chew anything tough, she supposed. But now, in this light, they looked a little like pearls.

P
ART
T
WO

S
OFTSTRIP

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.

– Henry Ward Beecher

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN:
G
REETINGS
F
ROM A
D
EAD
M
AN

F
OUR DAYS INTO
the job, Sean’s back screaming at him, things changed. Rapler and Ronnie Salt walked in on everyone during a tea break. The laughter that had been reverberating around the shattered remains of this fourth-floor suite of offices dwindled to a few nervous coughs. Rapler was white. Sean could see in the others’ faces that this meant something other than the offer of a pay rise.

Rapler said, “Mr. Lord’s here.”

Salt pointed at Sean. “Come with us, chum,” he said.

Sean wondered if he had been rumbled already. Maybe one of the “mourners” at the funeral had spotted him after all and identified him. Maybe he had been recognised as a policeman by someone he had arrested. That was all right. He could come clean and tell them he was off the Force; it was easily proved. Not that they would appreciate an ex-cop in their ranks.

“We slipped up,” Salt explained. “All new recruits must be doctored by the boss.”

“You mean vetted, surely?” Sean said, but Salt did not return his smile.

“Mr. Lord wants a word with you,” Rapler said, fidgeting with his notes. “That’s all. Just a routine chat. He likes to do that with all new employees. I think it’s a nice touch. Makes you feel welcome.”

Salt snorted. At the foot of the stairs he hung back and allowed Rapler to take Sean through the foyer to the forecourt. A black Shogun was parked rakishly across a number of bays. The man Sean had seen talking in the pub was standing with his arms folded, leaning against the rear doors of the four-by-four. Light collected in the lenses of his sunglasses. Sean wondered if he rued the fact that he was a white man. It spoiled the look he was after, from his scuffed black boots to his black leather trenchcoat.

“Hi,” Sean said.

Mr. Lord stared at him but said nothing. He turned to Rapler. “Why are you still here?”

“Sorry, Vernon,” Rapler said. “I thought you might want me to–”

“–to fuck off?” Vernon suggested.

“Yeah.” Rapler scurried away, leafing through the pages on his clipboard.

“That man,” Vernon said, his eyes on Rapler’s back, “is a first-class nadge sac.”

Sean laughed sycophantically. “How long have you known him?”

Vernon turned his shining lenses on Sean. “That, my friend, is one question too many from you. Shut up and come with me.”

Sean stood his ground. “A: you do not tell me to shut up. B: I am not some arse-kissing loser. Watch what you tell me to do. Like this job is so fucking valuable to me I couldn’t walk away whenever I fucking want to.”

Vernon regarded him for a moment. Then he nodded. “Fair enough. Come on. Let me buy you a pint.”

S
MOKE AND SWEAT
embraced Sean as Vernon Lord pushed him through the doors of the Fallen Angel. The clientele were a rag-bag of damp coats and spoiled teeth. Bottled stout or barley wine was the drink of preference. No smoking ban here. No copper would dare poke his head round the door to check. There was a hubbub of conversation underpinned by the thud of darts hitting a board at the dim reaches of the wedge-shaped lounge. Through greasy windows, Sean watched women in head scarves struggle against the wind as they carried their bags of shopping up Buttermarket Street.

“What you having?”

Sean said, “A lager.”

“Two Kronenbourg,” Vernon said to the barman, who stopped serving the women at the counter to get his drinks.

“You got a bit of clout round here, then?” Sean asked.

“All of it deserved, mate. Nothing wrong with a good rep.”

“A good rep,” Sean repeated. “What does a man do around here to garner himself a good rep?”

“Garner?” Vernon raised his eyebrows and saluted Sean with his pint. “I like it. Garner. Very educated, aren’t we?” He swigged half of his beer in one movement. “What are you doing humping bricks? Should be humping graduates.”

“I’m not the first bloke with half a brain to wear a hard-hat.”

Vernon ruminated on this for a while. “Still, it’s a rare thing. Most of the blokes on my sites. Jesus. If they didn’t have construction, they’d be about as much use as piss in a trumpet.”

“Look, I’m sorry for the smarts, okay? I just need some work, that’s all. I’ll dumb down.”

Vernon drained his pint and ordered a couple more without consulting Sean. “Well, fine, but I just need a few references, that’s all. I don’t know who the fuck you are or where the fuck you’ve come from, or what the fuck.”

“You’re talking like someone who’s got something to hide.”

“I have got something to hide, mate. I have. I’m quite up front about it. Question is, have you?”

“I already told Tony. I’m so square, I can’t stop turning corners.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

Sean shrugged. “Fuck the job then. Fuck you. But thanks for the drink.”

Vernon said, “It’s not the demolition I’m worried about. I couldn’t give a toss who works on that.”