The Dead Boy (18 page)

            Would
people, if they lived, even think of films or books or long-dead politicians,
philosophers, poets?

            Wake
wasn't a handsome man. He was short, slightly crooked. Did that matter?

            She
could take him to a room, now. He'd come. She might. He'd do it because he
wanted to, but she wouldn't because she wouldn't do that to a man she liked.
Use him like a vibrator. If it wasn't right for a man to use someone like that,
then it wasn't right for a woman, either, she figured.

           
What
the fuck am I even thinking about?

            She
laughed at herself. The burly, bearded rigger Bors glanced, then laughed at
her, laughing. She didn't begrudge him that. There was precious little joy out
here.

            Outside,
the wind howled, and even in the huts on the platform with tight steel doors
and half-arsed insulation, it was cold enough to get into a person's bones. She
wore a dead man's jumper. He died on the rig early on. No one spoke about it,
but she thought he might have taken a few too many pills on purpose. At least
he hadn't cut his throat or something. The jumper was clean enough though she'd
have worn it even if it hadn't been.

            George
turned nine on the rig. The cook (never a chef, he told them) made a cake. He
didn't have icing, but George grinned and told the man thank you with a nod of
his head and a happy smile. The cook seemed pleased enough.

            It
was the little things that people still clung to, and those little things kept
them going. Sometimes, they laughed.

            Mostly
it was hard.

            But
those little things were just enough. For Francis, always childless and
perfectly happy about it, her thing was watching the kid heal. It was
remarkable. By the time they'd landed on the rig, his arms were working just
fine, his hair grown back. Ragged, uneven, but a good head of hair. Dark,
probably like the boy's father or mother, though she never brought either up.
God knew it was hard enough to live, let alone drag past sorrows around with
you.

            Even
his skin, despite the storms and the darkened skies, rebounded. Probably just
being a kid, but he had colour again. He breathed, ate, took shits and pissed
outside the toilet bowl like any other kid his age even though he sat to do it.
How he managed to miss, sitting down, she had no idea.

            Feeling
returned to his legs, though he wasn't walking. Another month, maybe two, and Francis
thought he would be. The only shame was that his humour and his smart, quick
way of talking in her head couldn't be shared. He couldn't talk at all, not
even mutter a sound. There was nothing wrong with this tongue or throat. Whatever
damage had been done to him in The Mill would take a long time...but one day.

           
I
hope so
, she thought. She wanted to share him with the world. She was proud
of the kid. Maybe even loved him a little. He was a remarkable boy, after all.

            Francis
worried, though. The chances of anyone making it out there were next to none.
But that went both ways. They might be safe from O'Dell's guns and bombs...but
they were trapped.

            And
O'Dell wasn't restricted to his body any more than George.

           
I
think the real war starts soon,
he said. She couldn't get that out of her
head, and the fact remained; the helicopter would never fly again.

            This
platform was their tomb just as sure as any cell in a place called The Mill
might have been. They would all die on the rig. Wake, too, and that was shitty
payment for a good deed.

*

XIII.

Redman and Roo

Sometime
later, Kurt William O'Dell parked outside an old peoples' home in a small town
near to the east coast. A woman called Rowena continued in her work with the
elderly and infirm within. She was one of those infinitely good people who
stayed because of a sense of duty. Mostly, the compound U+03BF created
savagery. A rare few were unaffected, others changed in more subtle ways.

            Most
of the old folk Rowena tended were dead, though one hung on. He wouldn't last
much longer. He
couldn't.
She was running down and when she stopped, he
would die. But until then, there was no one else.

            In
the first weeks after the nuclear explosion that began it all, she buried the
dead. Then she tore something in her back lifting one heavy old girl. After
that, she just shut the doors to their rooms.

            The
home smelled bad, but then, it always had.

            Rowena's
back popped when she got out of bed the morning of her death. She had no idea
what the time was, or what day, only that she'd finished sleeping and the old
man downstairs needed feeding.

            She
headed into the kitchen to make breakfast for them both.

            'Morning,
Sasha,' she said. The cook, slumped with her head in a bowl of soup at the
counter where she'd always eaten her lunch, didn't say anything.

            Rowena
put a knife and fork on tray, busied herself with a gas stove she brought from
home a week before she moved in with the old folks permanently. She cooked the
old man's porridge in water and added a little salt. Milk was a thing of the
past, now. Maybe someday a thing of the future, but that wasn't her problem.

            The
porridge didn't look nice, but it was food. She managed two cups of tea with
the water that remained, with plenty of sugar to cover the awful taste of the
water.

            'Silly
moo,' she said to herself when she was done. 'How's he going to eat porridge
with a knife and fork?'

            She
swapped them for a spoon, then carried the tray along the hall to Wayland
Redman's room.

*

'Morning,
Mr. Redman,' said Rowena in that bright voice the insane love so much.

            'Morning,
Roo,' said Wayland, not turning around. He watched a crow and some kind of
grubby seagull fighting over some small scrap. The crows feathers had mostly
fallen out. He imagined it couldn't fly any longer. Feathers were important for
birds.

            'Piebald,
Roo. Is that word?'

            'I
think so,' said Rowena as she placed the tray with cooling porridge and oily
tea on his bed. She walked over the window where Wayland continued to watch the
birds fight.

            'Why
do you ask?'

            'Wondering
what you call it when an animal's hair falls out. Or feathers. Piebald seemed
like the right word. I'm not sure.'

            'I
think...I think it's a kind of horse. Something like that?'

            'A
horse?'

            'Sure.
Like...the colour. Something.'

            'Oh,'
said Wayland.

            'Porridge,
Mr. Redman.'

            'Porridge?'

            'For
breakfast. I managed a cup of tea, too. Dreadful thing.'

            'The
tea?'

           
I
think he needs something else to eat. He looks...yellow. Might be the porridge.
Or malnutrition. Probably malnutrition.

            Rowena
wondered if there were multivitamins in the medicine closet, or something
similar. Maybe one of those weight gain shakes. She took out a small pad from
her pocket, and a biro pen.

           
Check
for weight gain the old man is dangeroUS
, she wrote.

            'Can
I borrow a sheet of that and your pen, Roo?'

            'Of
course,' said Rowena. She tore a sheet free of the pad and passed paper and pen
both to Wayland. Wayland gripped the pen like a piece of cutlery.

           
He's
pretty far gone. Cancer, dementia.

            'Mr.
Redman...you're holding it wrong. You can't write like...look, you want me to
write for you?'

           
Still,
he's got no one else. Come to that, neither have I.

            She'd
decided right at the start to see it through.

            So
had Wayland.

            Rowena
leaned down to take the pen and paper back from Wayland. With the pen gripped
as it was like a piece of cutlery, a knife, perhaps, he stabbed her three times
in her throat.

*

O'Dell
held the handle to Wayland's door in one hand. In the other, to his ear, a
mobile phone.

            He
wasn't really concentrating on the phone. He mostly listened to Wayland as he
began to chat up the dying woman on the other side of the door.

           
Interesting
foreplay,
he thought.
Hell of a monologue. Hell of a thing.

           
'O'Dell?'

            'Sir,'
he said.

           
'This
Wayland...is he stable? Can you control him?'

            'Everything's
in hand, Sir,' said O'Dell, and cut the connection to the boss.

           
Is
he stable? Of course he fucking isn't,
thought O'Dell, and opened the door
without a sound. 

*

'Patronising
cunt,' said Wayland as Rowena wheeled around his room, bounced off the bed and
then lay on the floor gasping, blood gushing between her desperate fingers.

            Wayland
did have prostate cancer, and dementia was just settling in, though the
dementia didn't really bother him. He'd die from the cancer long before he
started dribbling into his shitty porridge. All to be expected.

            His
first boner in weeks was a pleasant surprise, though. Rowena writhing and
bucking and all red and wet with her great heaving tits there on the floor.

            Sometimes,
he drifted, largely unaware. Not this day.

            'Lucky
for you, Roo, I still know my way around a lady.'

            He
pulled his cock out. Truth was, he didn't know if it'd work all the way to the
end, but he was willing to give it a go. She'd be dead in maybe a minute,
probably less. But she'd be warm for long enough, he reckoned.

            His
knee, hip, back popped as he knelt and swiped her kicking legs apart. He swore
at the pain, but he remained hopeful enough. No sense in wasting a damn good
hard-on, and a rare one at that.

            Hopeful.

            Rowena
slowed, then she went still.

            'Ah
well,' he said to her. 'Show us your tits, then, eh? Don't mind, to you?' He
yanked her blouse aside with one hand. The other was busy trying to keep his
erection from shying away from the job at hand.

            'Never
fucked a dead woman. I think.'

            He
leaned back, smiled at the sight of her still chest, her nipples pert enough,
still a bit of buoyancy there, even if she was pushing fifty.
Not a bad
rack. Not bad at all.

            He
didn't hear the door open. He didn't hear the shot. The bullet tore off the
first couple of inches of his cock and most of his palm, thumb, middle and
index finger. For a second, Wayland stared, confused as to why blood spewed
from him. Red come instead of white? Maybe his prostate? Then he saw the ragged
mess.

            'Wayland.
How the hell are you?' said O'Dell.

*

Wayland
rolled to one side, leaking onto the woman's leg and the cheap carpet.

            O'Dell
sat on Wayland's bed with a grateful sigh.

           
Nice
to take the weight off.

            'Nice,'
he said, pointing his gun at the dead woman. He didn't have any designs on
women or men. Sex seemed, to him, little more than a distraction. He said it appreciatively,
though. Like one man might to another. How men of the world might talk, or so
he imagined. As O'Dell spoke, he concentrated on removing the tip of a bullet
that appeared between his fingers. A short knife in his left hand worked at the
bullet in his right. He slipped, cut his fingertip, and stared at bead of blood
growing there.

            'Look,
Wayland,' he said. 'Try to help people, and look what happens. I cut myself. It
really hurts. I cut myself trying to help
you
. Say thank you.'

            'Fuck
you.'

            'Confused,
obviously. Dementia, Wayland. It does that. But I accept your gratitude.'

            Finally,
the bullet popped free of the casing. O'Dell sniffed the powder inside. 'Better
than cocaine. Anyway,' he said, turning his gaze from the shell in his fingers,
to the woman, to Wayland. 'I've got a job of work for you, Mr. Redman. End of
the world and all that. I thought perhaps you might want to...go out with a
bang?'

            Redman
puked in response.

            'Fuck...cunt.'

           
A
dying man probably thinks he can get away with being rude,
thought O'Dell.

            'I
forgive you that, Wayland. As I was saying...'

            'You
shot my fucking cock off!'

            'Please
don't interrupt again. I have a job. A
final
job. We'll consider
accounts between us closed amicably thereafter.'

            'I'm
dying.'

            'You
always were, Wayland. Now, don't be a baby about it. Here. Let me help.'

            'Fuck...fuck
you!' Spittle flew from Wayland's mouth, which O'Dell ignored as he knelt
beside Wayland. Then, with a finger tapping the shell in his fingers, like a
man who's particular about how he salts his dinner, O'Dell covered the ragged
end of Wayland's penis with powder, and lit it with a swift click of a lighter.
The flash was hopeless. The powder was wet and didn't catch. The dry parts of
Wayland's skin flashed and burned instead. The wound itself just carried right
on leaking.

            'Well...fucked
that up, didn't I?' said O'Dell, peering into Wayland's rolling eyes. 'I really
thought that would work.'

            Wayland
passed out and O'Dell smiled, all teeth, but a little mirth, too.

            'Oh,
no. Not that easy,' he said to the unconscious man. 'Cunt? You don't know the
half. One job, Wayland. Then I'll let you die like a good dog.'

            Wayland
bled badly but O'Dell couldn't let him die. There weren't many people left he
could call on any longer.

            O'Dell
stood, old knees aching and popping, and went to hunt for something more
medicinal than wet gunpowder. He found a gas stove, some incontinence pads, and
no painkillers.

            Later,
dragging Redman to his car, O'Dell tired almost instantly. Not because the old
murderer was heavy. He wasn't.

           
I
got old
, thought O'Dell, and though he knew it well enough, sometimes his
age surprised him, still.

*