The Dead Boy (6 page)

            But
there was no other explanation. There was nowhere to walk to from the
supermarket. Maybe if you walked for thirty or forty minutes. George would.
David? No way. He'd have caught a bus before he walked more than ten minutes in
a line that didn't go round aisles.

           
So
what are you going to do about it, Eleanor?

            Nothing.
That's what she was going to do. She knew for sure that the soldiers weren't
going to let her pass, and there wasn't a road into the supermarket that wasn't
blocked or quarantined.

            Impotent,
she was left no choice but to go home and wait for news. It sucked, and she
hated herself even more, because for good or ill, they were her men.

           
Just
need some time to think, right?

            That
sounded sensible to her. Not great, not comfortable, but something. She twisted
the key in the ignition and the big engine roared to life just as a bus sped
past, rocking the X3.

            There
hadn't been a bus in the queue approaching the road block.

            Then
a second and a third bus passed her. For just an instant she saw inside - they
were people on the buses. They were full of people.

           
People
who were inside the quarantine. Like George, and David...

            Her
fog cleared.

            She
checked her mirrors and pulled out behind the last bus.            It was
driven by a man wearing a black breathing mask and a soldier's uniform.

*

The
BMW's fuel gauge was near enough full. Eleanor had maybe 200 miles before she
had to fill the tank again. She worried, though, because she'd been behind the
buses for forty-odd miles already. She had no idea how far a bus could travel. They
were just ordinary county buses - two decks, advertisements on the side and
back. Not like intercity coaches or something, more like they'd been taken from
the local bus depot specifically for transporting the people from the
supermarket.

            What
were those people to the army, or the Government, or whoever it was running
this show? Prisoners? Witnesses? Infected?

            She
didn't know that, either.

            She
thought of her husband and her son on those buses, but of the other people, too.
All bundled into a bus and driven out into the countryside, darkness all around
and rain on the windows. Hot, tired, probably hungry, and every one of them frightened.
Eleanor wondered if they'd been told the truth, or just some kind of pretty
lie. She wondered if they'd believe either.

            And
what was she thinking? Did
she
think there was something rotten going on?
The further they drove, the more she worried. She expected the buses to turn
into a hospital, or an army base, but she was wrong.

            It
was late into the night. They used quiet, back country roads with few road
signs. In following the buses out into these backwaters, she had entirely lost
track of where she was. Clouds covered any natural light, and the only artificial
light was her headlights and the tail lights of the buses ahead, both shining on
the wet road, bouncing back from cat's eyes. She was tired from driving and the
light was hurting her eyes, sore anyway from the strain of peering into the
darkness, from the light of the buses, back to the road, to the light...

            The
country road wound and twisted and turned and was hard to navigate. The buses
ahead were easy enough to follow, though.

           
Because
they're fucking buses
, she thought.

            The
further they travelled, the surer she became that her husband and son were in
danger. Why would the army drive innocent people out into the wilds for over an
hour? If her assumption was even near the mark, they might even be sick.

           
Dying,
though?

            It
didn't make any kind of sense.

            She
rubbed at her eyes for a moment, and when she looked ahead again, the lead bus'
brake lights glowed. The following buses slowed for something Eleanor couldn't
see. They didn't stop, but turned.

            She
came this far. She could only follow.

            Where
the three buses left the road was a long fence, and a gate. It lead through
some trees and out onto a small track surrounded by low shrubs.

            Signs
hung along the fence, each proclaiming the same owner:
Ministry of Defence.

            It
was a simple choice, right then. Her husband and her son might be on one of
those buses and they were the only two people in the world that made her better
than she was.

           
No
choice at all.

            Eleanor
switched off her lights and coasted through the gate. She used the ruts in the
road as a guide, until she saw the buses ahead, lights off, just looming hulks
of metal and glass in a wide expanse of nothing.

            'What
in the fuck is going on?' she whispered.

            Only
when she cut the engine did she hear them yelling. Distressed, or scared, and
probably angry, too. Taken from a normal day, thinking about family, and
chores, and the evening's television. Taken away from dinner or bedtime, or
dates, or parents. Then they'd been driven to the middle of nowhere and left in
the dark.

           
George.
David.

            If
they were in there, she had to do something. Even if they weren't...those people...

            For
a moment, she recognised she was about to try to interfere with the
army
- men with guns, and the law, and power...

            But
only for a moment.  

            She
had her right foot out of the car when a line of fire lit up the sky and the
lead bus exploded.

            'Oh...God...'

            Fire
trailed from the sky twice more. A forth bomb struck a beat later - this one
spread a wall of fire over the wrecked buses, engulfing everything in some kind
of chemical that turned the twisted buses and the fields around into bright
blue fire.

            There
could be no people after that...only fire.  

            'My
baby. My
baby
...no...please.'

            Eleanor
slumped back into her seat.

           
No
accident.

            Even
through the horror, and her sorrow, she understood she'd just witnessed fighter
jets raining fire down on three civilian buses full of innocent people. A cold,
heartless murder.

            And
one that left nothing behind at all.

            Fragmented
images ran through her mind. Skeletons, their limbs curled inward. Tortured metal
after plane crashes. Body parts sent home when the remains were not whole. War
graves, with bodies forgotten in vast pits.

            She
closed the car door. In shock, unable to look away from the flames, Eleanor
didn't realise a car pulled in behind her until someone rapped on her window.

            A
man stood calmly by her BMW, the side of his face lit by the distant fire. He
didn't smile. He looked, if anything, a little bored.

            She
opened her window just wide enough so they could speak.

            'Ma'am,
I'm going to have to ask you to step from the car.'

            'Who
the fuck are you?' said Eleanor. Sure she was afraid, but she was good and
angry, too. Terrified, heart-broken, sore, tired, yes, but above all that she
was fucking incandescent. She'd just witness the death of her family. Mass
murder, too, but right then she couldn't grasp that. It was just too big a
thought to hold to.

            The
man at the window nodded in response, perfectly calm in the face of her anger. A
good looking, confident man, with a straight stance, his shoulders back. He
looked fit. He didn't have the tired, broken look of a policeman. If he wasn't
a soldier, he had to be RMP - the military police - something like that.

            He
reached into his jacket - dark, almost black, but in firelight they could have
been green fatigues. He pulled out a wallet and took out an ID card from inside.
On it, his picture, and his name and rank within some branch of the military
she didn't recognise, and
Ministry of Defence
, which she understood just
fine.

           
Give
yourself a round of applause, Eleanor. Now you're really fucked.

            Eleanor
didn't care either way. Her husband and son had been blown apart by missiles
named after snakes or big cats or something like that. Predatory names given to
deadly toys by idiot men.

            'Now,
step from the car, please.'

            'You
just...
you killed all those people
.'

            'Ma'am,
you're in so much trouble right now. I could put you in a cell with a bucket
and no fucking posters for the rest of your life and not even your family would
remember your name. I'm trying to be reasonable.
Step from the car
.'

            He
didn't raise his voice. Not once.

            Eleanor
felt like she'd just been slapped, and damn hard, but that was good. She needed
it.

            'My
family won't remember me, you fucking prick,
because you just killed them
.'

            He
didn't even have the grace to change his expression.

            'Out.'

            You
couldn't just get away with murdering three buses full of terrified people.
You
just couldn't.
Humans. Her family.

            But
she had no choice.

            'Thank
you, ma'am,' said the soldier as Eleanor stepped out. Her legs shook and on the
uneven surface she leaned sideways and held onto the car door to stop herself
falling down. A woman came from the other side of the X3. Eleanor was so
shocked she hadn't even noticed the woman.

           
In
case I tried to get out on the passenger side
, she thought. She was
relieved to know she could still think something, even though she felt cold as
death inside.

            'Easy
or hard,' said the man with a smile that showed no teeth.

            'Easy,'
said Eleanor. No point in fighting it, not right now. There was a time for fighting,
and her way of fighting would involve every newspaper she could get to listen,
or the court, or fuck it, if it came to it, she'd...

           
You'll
what? It's the God-damned army.

            'Good
choice,' said the man.

            He
stepped back and the woman in fatigues from the other side of the car stepped
forward, raised a pistol and shot Eleanor Farnham in the head.

            The
blood didn't hit the car or the man.

            'Easy
always best, isn't it?' said the man.

            'Suits
me fine,' said the woman.

            No
witnesses and no survivors - a happy circumstance which coincidentally suited Kurt
O'Dell just fine, too.

*

V.

The Mill

In
three or four days, the fire along the motorway would cool. Cars would fuse to
the tarmac, as would the bodies of the dead. Ordinarily, parts would be sent,
piecemeal, to the bereaved as they were slowly catalogued and identified.

           
ENGLAND
MOURNS
, O'Dell imagined. He should know. He wrote the headline.

            That
England - countryside, unseen in the darkness, or motorway haunted by
disembodied white lights, or cityscapes with their different hues, lights and
buildings and people, too - all scrolled by as O'Dell drove north in his quiet
black car.

            The
English would rally. People would cry. But he didn't think they would have all
that long to mourn all those poor dead they would never know.

            That
was how he thought of people. As
'them'
. And only when he considered
humanity at all.

            Himself,
his boss?

           
Us.

            Them
and us, us and them. No way both were going to be around when the fire started.

            Somewhere
far behind O'Dell and the clever child in his charge, a road accident he'd
caused, and not the kind a clean-up crew simply scraped up and covered with
dirt and sawdust. Their pain didn't touch O'Dell. Their pain. Not his.

            Old
news.

            The
kid slept sprawled over the back seat of the sedan. He wouldn't wake until he
was safe in his new home.

            O'Dell,
his ever-present damaged grin on his face, wondered about the boy - like how
he'd known where to find him. How the boy (no...his
power
) called out to
him.

            A
boy, thought O'Dell, who was much like himself. Not just talented, like the
others he'd taken over the years. The boy was
different.

            The
Mill was the best place for different people like George Farnham.

            George
grunted something, just like kids talk in their sleep. O'Dell glanced, convinced
the kid's eyes would be open, and he would be staring at O'Dell.
Reading
him.

            But
no. The kid was done. He wasn't coming back.

            'No
one's coming back,' he said. Then, his hand jittered on the gear stick and his
eyes drifted - but the movement only small, and quick, and as ever O'Dell was
unaware.

            'They're
sheep. Baa baa bleating sheep.'

            O'Dell
didn't need the radio or news to see the picture
they
saw. Sheep saw
what they wanted to see, and if the picture didn't fit, their minds
made
it fit. Their own fucking minds, jamming facts into a comfortable box they
could manage to hold.

            The
country in
horror
. Reporters,
shocked
. Ticker tapes on Sky News,
or the BBC, updating housewives all day long with the same inescapable blather.

            As
long as the idiot masses got the message that it was a
terrible accident
and that people could
die
in their beloved England...well, they'd be
happy enough. People loved a tragedy far better than stories about ducks and
babies and wonderful gadgets and miracle cures for cancer that weren't real.

           
None
of it is real for them...not really. Just us.

            O'Dell
had his own ticker tape that updated him on the real news (though just as
unimportant, perhaps). Red text against the windshield up and to the right, the
phrasing just as angular as the glowing display. It didn't distract him. O'Dell
was very good at concentrating.

            The
car rolled.

            Tenants
of a farmhouse a mile from the epicentre: Debtors flee country. The inhabitants
of five houses to the east: Carbon monoxide deaths. Seven teenagers hanging out
in the park found later, faces stuck in their own dried vomit: New youth drug
fatality.

            Others
besides, but nothing new, or urgent. Local news, mostly.

            When
the quarantine finally lifted the national (and international) news would
report one hundred and ninety four people confirmed dead. Twenty-three missing;
their bodies never found.

            Maybe,
given time, people would look closer and notice the obvious, massive
discrepancies in the information released under the auspices of the MoD. O'Dell
wasn't concerned in the slightest. They would have other things to worry about
by then.

            'We'll
be fine. Us and them, right?' he said. He wasn't sure who he meant. Talking to
himself, or the kid, or maybe just the night sky.

            He
shrugged his tired, narrow shoulders and settled down to a steady 80mph on the
final stretch of the journey. By the time he pulled into a brightly light subterranean
car park, most of that which passed on the journey was already forgotten.

            His
concentration was phenomenally, but Kurt William O'Dell had hardly any memory
at all.

*

While
the first of O'Dell's fire teams went to work, Francis Drew Sutton was
wondering how to get help for the policeman. Now her eyes were better adjusted
to the gloom, his uniform became clear. She could even make out insignia on his
epaulettes and chest. Rank and force, probably, but the symbols alone didn't
mean much to her.

            'Have
you got a radio?' she asked.

            'Broke,'
he said.

            To
her own ears, she sounded shrill and panicked. His was a quiet, tired, voice. Like
a man who'd given up. She might have to carry him up the embankment, or leave
him and run for help. She was reluctant to do either. To leave him meant they
would both be alone, with insane people not too far away. To carry him up the
steep slope in the dark would hurt him more, maybe irreparably. Maybe even kill
him. She could probably do it, somehow, but not without risking injury herself.
If that happened, they'd be fucked together. 

             'Shit,'
she said, and squatted beside the policemen.

            'You?
Haven't you got a phone?'

            'Sure.
In my car.'

            'Leave
me. Go call for help.'

            It
was difficult to think through the noise around them. Fire, sirens, and
helicopters high and unseen somewhere nearby. Sometimes a scream would reach
her, shocking each time. People; dying and terrified and in pain.

           
I
wish they'd fucking shut up, though,
she thought.
I can't get my head
straight.

           
The thought came
from someplace low and cold.

           
Nice,
Francis.

            But
she really did wish they'd shut up.

            'I'm
not sure back that way is the best...'

            'Shh,'
he said.

            'What?
Don't tell me...'

            'Wait.'

            Interrupted
a second time, she was ready to lash out, policeman or not. His hand dug into
her arm hard, then. It hurt enough to stall her - a second later she forgot to
be offended entirely. Gunfire. Harsh, understated, barking, and close.

             It
couldn't be, though. Why would anyone be firing a gun?

            Not
just one gun, but lots of guns. Like machine guns, unmistakable despite that she'd
only heard those in action movies and the films about war that her husband
sometimes watched.

           
Of
course it's not gunfire. Doesn't make sense. But what does?

            She
crouched lower. Just an instinctive response. The policeman felt it, too. The
air, suddenly full of menace.

            'Don't
go up.'

            The
fear in his face hit her hard. He was supposed to be the one dealing with this.
If he was frightened...

            'Is
that gunfire? Like real guns?'

            'I
think so,' said the policeman. He paused. 'Yes. It is.'  Certainty enough in
his voice for Francis to believe that all of this wasn't some crazy
hallucination, or a madness inside her. It was real.

            The
shots were no longer sporadic, shy sounds, but sustained - powerful, filling the
night - a wall of noise louder than the fire and the screams both.

            'What
the fuck is going on?'

            'Don't
know. Army? A terror attack. Not an accident?'

            The
intensity lessened. Back to sporadic bursts, then all the way down to single
shots.
Finishing up,
she thought. They'd killed everyone there was to
kill and were moving closer.
Making sure.

            'What
should we do?'

            The
policeman was silent for a moment.

            'They're
not here to help,' he said.

            'I
get that. But what should
we
do?'

            'Stay
right here?'

            A
few more shots rang out, then, nothing.

            'You're
asking me?'

            'Shit,'
he said. 'I don't know any better than you. What about the supermarket?'

            Francis
shook her head.

            'I
tried to tell you - everyone's mental back there. That's where I came from.'

            'Mental?'

            She
nodded. 'Hurting themselves and each other. Maybe it is some kind of terrorist
thing. A virus. Something like that?'

            'But
is it better than guns?'

            She
wasn't sure, but she didn't say it. The policeman was unsure enough for the
both of them.

            'Hold
on,' she said.

            'I'm
not going anywhere,' he replied, but to her back, because she was already
heading through the copse of trees to take a look at the supermarket.

*

Francis
crouched in the cover of the darkness between the saplings and low branches. Ahead,
the supermarket was engulfed by fire.

           
Clean
up on aisle five
, she thought. Then wondered if maybe she was going crazy
after all. In the car park, men who moved like soldiers raised their weapons. Small
bursts of fire spat here and there, and whatever they hit fell down.

            Not
whatever
.

           
Whoever.

            Bullets
hit the crazies, the crazies lay still.

            Maybe
they were thinking the same as her, just doing their cleaning with bullets
instead of a mop and bucket.

           
This
isn't just serious,
she thought.
I'm going to die, and if I don't die
from whatever it is making people nuts, those bastards are going to kill me.

            If
it came to it, she'd look out for herself first, everybody else second, but she
wasn't going to run and leave the policeman.

            Where
the hell could she run
to
?

            The
soldiers wore protective gear, like body armour, but their clothing was
entirely black. They wore masks.       

            What
kind of soldiers wore masks?

           
Ones
exposed to chemicals and poisons. Like me.

            Whatever
was in the air, or the smoke, or wherever - she and the policeman had breathed
it in, too.

            She
crawled away from the slaughter with bile burning the back of her throat. But
if she puked, they might hear. If they heard...

            Sick
rose, but she swallowed in down. That burned, too.

            All
the way back she hunched low, expecting a bullet but finding only the shadows
and the damp ground beneath. A little rain, but not enough to for the
fire...nothing would be enough. These were fires that would burn in a deluge,
in a monsoon. The stench in the air couldn't be washed away. She imagined, even
there in the cool grass with the red and blue lighting the sky above, that she
could smell gunsmoke. But how could she smell anything but the heavy reek of
burning bodies and fuel and rubber from above?

            The
policeman lay where she'd left him.

            'Can't
go that way. Soldiers shooting anything that moves.' She wondered if she was
going to cry.

           
Nope.
I'm not.