The Dead Boy (2 page)

            A
green van with military plates and medical markings slowed as it reached the
smouldering carnage. The car behind didn't. It smashed the back of the van in
as fire licked slowly at the front of the pile-up. The fire spread quickly, driven
in the wind and spilled fuel, toward the green van.

            The
flames caught fast. The driver, stunned, with blood pouring down his face,
didn't react. The van burned, along with the contents of several vials. The
chemical compound in the vials vaporised and rose along with the thick smoke - just
as the man with fire in his eyes had always intended.

            That
man's name was Kurt William O'Dell. He stood in the supermarket car park and
watched the flames flicker, then grow.

            In
the ashes that drifted from that fire, the dead days began.

*

Daylight
began to fade sometime between six and seven that night, but the night stayed
light enough for hours longer - from the fire, from the swirling glow of emergency
lights, and headlights of traffic backed up for miles and miles in both
directions. The sickly orange glow of sodium arc lights shone over the
supermarket car park. The bright fluorescents still worked within the store.

            By
the time fire engines arrived to fight the blaze, the ashes were blown far and
wide. The fire that raged through the carnage was hot enough to create its own
thermal, rising on the warm September air. Ash drifted over the supermarket, where
it was swept into the air conditioning system to be pumped into the lungs of
the shoppers.

            Near
to the fire, most bodies were incinerated beyond recognition. But one casualty,
a man missing the rear portion of his skull and his brain, was beyond the heat,
forgotten by the side of the slip road. His teeth gnashed at nothing, like a
man in death throes, but by medical standards he was already an hour dead come sunset.
His heart no longer beat, his brain retained no higher functions, and yet David
Farnham dragged his cooling body through the grass and roadside shingle toward
the fire. Perhaps it was some chemical thing, or some memory, which drove him
on to find his son, or maybe something simple and primordial like the pull of
bright fire.

            O'Dell
watched this first field trial and understood that it was nothing more than a
rare effect of the compound unleashed over the town.
'Moderate and short-term
functionality presents post-mortem in a very small number of patients'
.
Nothing mystical or magical but a simple, mundane secondary effect of science.

            It
was the primary effect on which he focused, but until that moment came, the
crawling man proved an interesting diversion. Well back from the supermarket
and fire both, he watched Farnham's meandering progress through a small set of
binoculars. Coincidence was uninteresting to O'Dell. The fact that the boy's
father was the one crawling, ignorant of his own death, didn't worry him or
cross his mind.

            A
man like O'Dell
focuses
.

            As
the dead man neared the burning upholstery, rubber, flesh and fuel, his hair
caught fire. At a distance, it was difficult to gauge the man's injuries, but
the man with the binoculars could see the dead man's jaw snapping. Some kind of
compulsion, or misfire in his disconnected nerves, perhaps.

            A
paramedic set out at a run toward the crawling man, now burning quite merrily.

            The
man who watched took the binoculars from his eyes now that enough people
gathered outside the supermarket. This, the reason he came, even more than the
Farnham boy.

            'Two
birds, one stone,' he whispered, unaware he spoke to himself and that his left
hand jittered on the binoculars held at his side.

            Fire
flickered in his eyes still, even as he turned from the blaze.

*

The
emergency worker cried as he watched the awful deaths through the wavering heat
and smoke. The haze was heavy and it took a moment to register the crawling,
burning shape of David Farnham as human.

            'Christ...
someone help
!'

            The
paramedic, Damien Cobb, didn't know if anyone heard his shout and didn't stop
to find out. The heat licked at Cobb as he ran. It was uncomfortable, bordering
pain, but he was only in pain - the man on the road was
dying
.

            Smoke
drifted, heavy enough that he lost sight of the man. When he came into view
again, Cobb saw just how badly the man was injured. The fire roared in Cobb's
ears and the smoke stole his breath, but he had to get the poor bastard clear
of the heat.

           
And
put him out. Shit.

            Cobb
reached him, and the burned man clutched at the paramedic with a hand more bone
than flesh.

           
How
in the fuck is he still alive?
It was the only half-way coherent thought in
Cobb's head. The heat from the road was burning through the soles of Cobb's
shoes. If he didn't get away from the fire, he'd die, too. But he couldn't. David
Farnham's hand wouldn't unclench. The fire ran from Farnham to Cobb and the
paramedic's sleeve began to burn. His hair fizzled, curling wildly.

            Left
no choice at all, Cobb lashed out with his free hand and slammed the man who
should have been dead to the molten tarmac.

            Before
he could flee, another of many explosions from the wreckage blasted Cobb hard
enough to send him into the air, then to roll down an embankment away from the
fire.

*

While
the heat swallowed David Farnham and Damien Cobb began to burn, Ben North
watched. He stood well back from the inferno at the edge of a long cordon of
policemen and women, all of whom were colleagues, none of whom he would call
friend. He was at the edge, like he always was, because he couldn't stand
besides the others. The horror in their faces would be like looking in a
mirror, and his was a face he could barely stand each morning. But reflected in
a hundred faces?

            Nope.

            The
flaming man latched onto the paramedic and the paramedic's sleeve begin to burn.
North glanced to left and right. No one else saw. He could have shouted, but
the smoke and the heat and the crushing fear in his chest wouldn't let him.

           
The
paramedic's going to die,
he thought. Pointless, that thought, because even
knowing that, and knowing his job was to do something, he couldn't move.

            Stupid
fucker's too close to the heat. He's going to burn up too.

            Against
his own will, Ben set out at a run through the swirling smoke. Flames leapt, heat
blasted against him. The inferno was to his right. The paramedic and the man (
the
man entirely on fire. Surely he's dead?
) were ahead and to the left, by the
verge and the embankment below. The embankment, lower than the surface of the
road, would be cooler.

           
Safer.

            The
melting tarmac was more like thick mud than road. It slowed him, pulled at his
shoes. He strove to think through his fear, tried to make it go away through
control alone.

           
Stop
running that way, dickhead,
his fear told him.
Run the other fucking
way.

           
Control,
he told himself.

            But
control was an illusion. There was no way to control fear. It was heavy. He
fought it, like he did every day, but always lost.

           
Run
away, coward.

            The
smoke filled his lungs, blinded him, but he didn't stop. He wanted to. Damn, he
wanted to be anywhere but here, breathing in the ash of dead people.

           
One
foot in front of the other
, thought the policeman.
Move.

             The
paramedic flailed at the crawling, grasping carcass that had no right to be
alive at all. The paramedic might yet survive. Ben hit him sidelong at exactly
the moment the blast from a secondary explosion reached them. The wave slammed
North and a punch to his whole body like the fist of God himself blew him
toward the verge. His head slammed against hard stone between the tarmac and
the verge, and Cobb fell with him.

*

II.

Francis Drew Sutton

Around
the time the accident happened, Francis Drew Sutton waited impatiently while a
woman roughly her age rang Francis' purchases through the supermarket till. She
only had a bottle of juice, an oat bar, some fruit, a pint of milk, a yoghurt -
a single woman's lonely Friday night shop. She was married, but her husband was
never around. She may as well have been single.

            The
woman at the till glanced at Francis with distaste, like she thought her
customer just another rich bitch. Good, expensive, clothes fitted Francis'
good, expensive body very well. She knew it, but what was she going to do?
Dress down, get fat, just to keep other people happy?

           
Screw
that.

           
Francis smiled
sweetly at the woman in a way that said 'fuck off' more succinctly that a man
ever could.

            As
a piece of debris killed David Farnham, Francis pushed her debit card into the
slot underneath the keypad at the end of the till. She tapped out her PIN code,
followed the instructions on the small screen and removed the card. She put the
card in her purse, largely ignoring the photo sandwiched in the see-through
plastic window, like most people do. You look at something every day, you
hardly notice it anymore.

            'Thank
you,' she said to the woman at the till. The woman's teeth were slightly
yellowed, like she was a smoker or a big tea drinker.

            Francis'
teeth were as near to perfect white as they could be. She had a confident
smile, the smile of a woman who was beautiful and knew it.

            She
had a good walk, one that sort of swayed, perhaps practised once when she was
younger, but now just a natural, unconscious thing. A woman who walked like she
was dancing. Men noticed her, whether they were specifically looking at the
women on a Friday night or not. Then, without fail, they looked away and
pretended they hadn't taken an eyeful. Their looks were longing, like she was unattainable,
definitely, but still a woman worth a second, third, and fourth look.

            Francis
was immune to the stares she got. She was used to it. 37 years old, she'd been
living with it a long time. And she didn't mind at all. She'd had a little help
as the years wore on, paid for by her husband's fat bank account. The gym did
the rest.

            Young
guys, old guys...they were all pretty much the same. Most acted like dippy
teenagers around her. She liked confident men, though, not the dippy kind that
drooled after her. She didn't particularly like her husband, but he was away with
his work more often than not, and she was far from unattainable. Even with an
absentee husband, Francis Sutton was rarely short of company.

            Stepping
from the warmth of the supermarket, expecting frigid air, she found instead the
night sky lit by fire. Maybe three or four hundred yards away, metal screeched,
deep within the blaze, or careened into the air. Small explosions as petrol
caught fire, the stench of burning rubber. Ash like snow drifted over a crowd
with horrified faces who either pushed get a better look, or just get to their waiting
cars and drive away.

             Some
took photos and video on their phones - the younger people, mainly. Others (mostly
the older people) spoke into their phones instead, calling the emergency
services.

            There
were already plenty of flashing blue lights up ahead, though, battling amidst
the orange glow. Francis didn't bother calling anyone, simply watched the
firelight, the blue glow, but the people all around her, too.

           
Look
at them
, she thought.
The next good book won't be a bible. It'll be
fucking Facebook.

            Photos
went to Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, or any number of sites. Older people
spoke in panicked voices to the beleaguered operators at emergency desks around
the county. All excited or frightened or shocked, some loud and some hushed voices.
And all of them breathing in the ashes of the dead and miniscule particles of a
compound first used over half a century before.

*

Ben
North wasn't any kind of hero. He'd never told any of his colleagues, his
brothers, or his wife that fear ate at him each day, and if there was one thing
he feared more than anything else, it was donning his uniform.

            He'd
been transferred out of London to this town in Norfolk. A smallish town. The
kind of place they sent people with mental problems in the hope that a quieter
life would fix them.

            Sure,
there was still crime. It wasn't like he was some Victorian with melancholia
bundled off to chill out and watch the sea. But countryside crime wasn't London-crime,
in either scale or venom. A kind of holiday, then. But it wasn't far enough.
The holiday Ben needed was on a beach somewhere sunny with no one else around.
Perhaps for the rest of his life.

            The
blast that took Cobb and North the rest of the way over onto the grass verge and
down the embankment also slammed the two men together. Cobb's descent stopped
in a tangle of limbs just below the road, his neck broken from colliding with
North. His sleeves and hair and shoes burned, then smouldered, then went out.
He didn't notice anything but the pain in his head, as his hair burned to the
scalp, then charred his skin. He felt nothing below his neck, but only for a
short time. He didn't feel his chest stop working. Everything was cool, and
dark, and that was just fine.

            North
didn't die. He bounced, rolled, bounced and slid.

           
Maybe
it's Post-Traumatic Stress,
thought North, before he hit the grass and his
breath rushed out. Then, no thought at all as something inside cracked. The
bolt of pain that came after couldn't be alleviated with a yell or scream,
because he had no breath.

           
I'm
dying,
he thought.
Just like I knew I would.

            That
should have been a comfort, maybe, but it wasn't.

            He
twisted one more time, his leg whipped around a tree and pain turned everything
black and red. He came to rest somewhere in a sparse copse that was mostly
saplings, unconscious.

*

Giant
panels of glass ran the length of the supermarket front. Each pane was
reinforced, thick and tough...but they weren't designed to withstand the blast
that came from the motorway. The blast sent debris hurtling through the sky at
over a hundred miles per hour, and accelerating.

            Something
large and metallic shattered the window directly behind Francis. It flew further,
taking out two tills at the tobacco counter and killing three women who'd been gabbing
beside the lottery instants.

            Glass
fell around the crowd outside in huge, deadly shards. When it settled, she
stared at the gawkers. Not one had been hit.

            '
Shit
fuck!'
said a younger man, his voice high pitched with shock. Someone else giggled at
the swear, or maybe the man's voice.

           
That
seems about right,
thought Francis.

            A
blackened hunk of metal rested in the supermarket's first aisle, and another jagged
object had obliterated the counter where people prayed for a windfall they were
most unlikely to ever win, and stocked up on impulsive chocolate, or cigarettes
they needed and gum that wouldn't help take the smoke-stench away. She heard
the tick of cooling metal from the debris in the first aisle - things burned
and popped and hissed and exploded.

           
Furniture
polish,
she though. Things like that. Leather wax and shoe polish and air
fresheners.

            Inside,
the sprinkler system kicked in.

            People
were screaming and crying now, their phones forgotten and expressions of gaping
awe gone.

            A
large smear of blood and something more solid covered the little pieces of MDF
wood of the tobacco counter. A tangled trolley, crushed and broken, the wire
frame haphazard and grotesque, held onto some flesh and torn clothing.

            That
explosion was shortly followed by a third and a fourth. A wave of superheated
air blew Francis and others backward. She landed on her perfect gym-bought arse.
An old woman fell beside her. The woman's teeth clacked shut as her head hit
the concrete.

            Francis
rolled, pushed herself to her feet, and tried to help the woman stand. The top half
of a set of teeth, false, lay on the floor beside the woman. She didn't take
Francis' offered hand, but instead clutched at her left arm with a grimace. Her
face was grey as her hair, even bathed in the light of the fire and fluorescents.

           
The
old girl's having a heart attack.

           
'Shitfuck
' just about sums that up
, thought Francis.

            No
one in the small crowd seemed interested in helping. People were on the ground,
or stood dumbly, bleeding or yelling. A man cradled a screaming child. Even to
Francis' inexperienced ears, the cry sounded more of fear than pain. Many of
them looked away, like they actively wanted nothing to do with the wounded or
the frightened or the woman dying at their feet.

            But
for one guy. He looked, all right. But he wasn't the kind of man who helped.
Francis understood that the second she saw him.

            He
grinned. A full on, toothsome grin, with every tooth in his head on show. He
had dark, maybe black eyes. For a second Francis thought she saw flames there,
within his eyes. But it was just the firelight reflected, nothing more. As his
gaze turned toward her, Francis looked down. She knelt and took the woman's
hand, thankful for the pretence.

            She
didn't want that man's help. When she glanced back he had gone.

            The
old woman's chest rattled loudly enough that Francis heard it over the next,
smaller, explosion. She'd heard that rattle before. When her father had died,
he'd made that noise.

           
That's
a death rattle
.

            'Someone...
please
help...' she said, but not loudly enough.

            Francis
had no idea what to do, and then it was out of her hands. There was no pulse. What
she wanted to do more than anything else right then was to get in her Mercedes
and drive home, where things made sense. But the woman was dead, and she
couldn't just leave, could she?

            She
closed the old girl's eyes with her fingertips, then took deep breaths, trying to
calm herself. What did she care? Just some old woman. It wasn't like Francis
had known her.

           
Don't
be such a bitch
.

            The
woman's eyes, which just closed, opened and those eyes were full of blood, haemorrhaged.

            '
Fuck
,'
said Francis, jumping back.

            'Lady?'
she said, before realising she didn't know where to go with the sentence.

            The
woman's eyes closed just as suddenly as they'd opened.

           
Just
some kind of death burp
, thought Francis, and though she'd nearly been
scared enough to shit herself, she caught herself on the cusp of breaking out
into nervous giggles.            Alone in a sea of stunned, confused people,
Francis felt like the only sane person in an asylum. She began to move away.

           
Time
to get the fuck out of this circus
.

            The
woman was dead and the police could deal with it. There was nothing she could
do about some dead woman she didn't even know.

            As
Francis turned away and took the first step toward the open air, and her car
somewhere in the dark, she heard a click behind her. It sounded like a set of
teeth closing on nothing.

*

The
grinning man, Kurt William O'Dell, melted away from the crowd the moment the woman
stopped staring at him. Even though largely immune to physical attractions, he
had to admit that there was something arresting about her.

            When
he was safely shrouded once more in the dark, he took a mobile phone from his jacket
- a slightly larger and heavier version than even the smartest of phones a
civilian might own. He held the phone up, toward the supermarket entrance and
the people there, rather than at the fire. The phone was in O'Dell's steady
right hand, his jumping left hand thrust into his jacket pocket, the
rictus-grin permanent on his lined face.

            The
live feed from the phone streamed directly to a man he had never met.