The Dead Have No Shadows (29 page)

When he did open his eyes, Mickey saw that the bricks of the pedestrian street had disappeared.  He was kneeling on bare ground, scattered with dry twigs and dead leaves.  Mickey looked up.  Pester and Elena were still there but his home city had completely disappeared.

The final stage of Mickey’s journey was about to begin.

Mickey rolled off his knees and sat on the hard ground.  He was trembling badly and didn’t trust his legs to hold him up.  The phantom pain in his chest was waning, allowing the hot throbbing in his right thigh to re-assert itself.

“What happens now?” asked Mickey.  His previous anger at Pester hadn’t entirely subsided.  Mickey felt pretty pissed off that he was being used as a pawn in some kind of supernatural power game.  He knew it wasn’t really
Pester’s
fault; he was only helping to move the pieces around, as instructed.  But Pester was one of the visible faces of all this.  So it was natural that Mickey should vent his anger on the one closest to him.

“We move on,” Pester replied.  Seeing the annoyance on Mickey’s face he added, “I don’t know what lies ahead.  The end of your journey could be over the next hill or it could still be a couple of days away.  I doubt it’ll be much more than that.  You’re up to date; you’ve had your last episode.  Things feel as if they’re drawing to a close.”

Mickey accepted
Pester’s
answer without question.  His guide hadn’t lied to him before, he’d just been evasive.  Mickey had no reason to suspect that Pester was about to start lying now.

Mickey climbed to his feet.  He looked around at where the city had been with a feeling that he’d seen the last of his old life.  Everything now would be looking forward, not that there seemed to be a great deal to look forward to.

“Let’s get on with it then,” he said and started walking.

Keeping in step with Mickey’s slow pace, Pester and Elena followed.

The clearing where Derby had stood was soon blocked from view by a forest of dead trees.  Despite the lack of leaves, visibility was soon reduced to a hand full of yards in all directions.  The going under foot became more difficult as the forest floor was littered with fallen twigs and branches.  Each uneven step jarred on Mickey’s injury.

“What time is it?” Elena asked.  They had been walking for about an hour.

“Judging by the sun I’d say it’s mid afternoon,” said Pester.

“No, I mean the real time,” Elena said.  “We have gone from day time to night time and back again, just like that.  I am confused.  And I am hungry.”

“Well if you’re hungry, it must be lunchtime,” said Mickey, trying to lighten the tone.  He limped to a fallen tree, happy for the chance to rest.  Pester checked the contents of Elena’s bag.

“We’d need to light a fire for most of this food,” he said.

“Why can we not have a fire?” said Elena petulantly.  “I want hot food.”

Mickey’s stomach rumbled in agreement.

“Aye, I’m sure you would – both of you,” Pester said.  “But it’s too risky.  This dead wood is tinder dry.  It wouldn’t take much for all of this to go up in flames.  Plus, even a small fire would create a lot of smoke and signal to Mr. Jolly where we are.”

“Ok.  Cold food it is then,” said Mickey.  He wanted to avoid the inevitable encounter with Mr. Jolly for as long as he could.

Lunch consisted of dry and leathery corned beef followed by peach slices with the worst of the rot cut off.  Despite the poor quality of the food the three of them tucked in oblivious of the fact that this was the last food that any of them would eat.

When it was time to move on Mickey stood up but his leg gave way beneath him.

“Let me see your leg,” said Elena.

Mickey unwound the bandage.  The fragrance of the poultice had done an excellent job.  It had completely masked the necrosis that had set in around the wound.

Instead of looking concerned Elena seemed angry.

“Look at what has happened.”

Pester didn’t seem troubled.  “Calm down Lassie.  We don’t need to heal the wound.  We just have to keep him on his feet long enough for him to reach the end of his journey.”

“But we do not know how long that will take,” Elena snapped.

Pester shrugged.  “So we have to do the best we can.  How much of that poultice is left?”

Elena reached into her bag and pulled out the jar of the green pungent substance and passed it to Pester.  She also produced a packet of painkillers which she threw at Mickey. 

“You were supposed to be helping me; not the other way round.”

Mickey looked as if he had just had his face slapped; much to
Pester’s
amusement.   To avoid an argument Mickey busied himself with opening the painkillers.  He quickly dry swallowed a handful of the tablets.

Pester knelt and packed the festering injury on Mickey’s thigh with the salve.

He worked to an accompaniment of swearing from Mickey as the green goo stung the flesh around the young man’s wound.

Pester then rewrapped the leg with the same filthy and pus soaked bandage. 

“How does that feel?” Pester asked.

 “Better,” Mickey lied.  “Thanks,”

The leg did actually feel a little better.  Mickey thought the green poultice had some anaesthetic properties about it and he also assumed that the painkillers were beginning to kick in, even though he’d only just taken them.  The real test would be when he tried to stand up.  Mickey rolled to one side so that he first took the weight on his left leg.  He pushed himself upright with his hands.  The ensuing dizziness and nausea quickly passed.

“Ok. Let’s go,” he said.

Though the poultice or drugs, or both, had dulled the pain the bandage felt tight and restricted Mickey’s movement, making progress slow.  The uneven ground didn’t help and several times Mickey tripped or overbalanced, jarring his leg with his heavy footfall.  Even the painkillers weren’t able to hold back the breakthrough pain that shot up from the injured thigh to the pit of Mickey’s stomach.

It began to get dark and Mickey realised that it had nothing to do with the time of day.  The trees were getting closer together; so much so that the upper branches were intertwining, forming a semi-solid canopy over their heads.  At ground level any semblance of a path had all but disappeared and the three travellers had to navigate around tree trunks and over more fallen branches and twigs.  The journey now had a permanent background of crunching and crackling.

Mickey felt they had been walking for hours when Pester called a halt for a rest.  The sun was now invisible so that it was impossible to gauge what time it was.  There was very little water left so each took a sparing sip.  Pester insisted that Mickey take an extra swallow before throwing the now empty bottle to one side.  Mickey lay back against a tree trunk and closed his eyes. 

It occurred to him that something was odd.  He couldn’t place it at first then realised that the crackling sound that they’d made whilst walking over the dead twigs could still be heard.

“What’s that sound?” he asked, opening his eyes again.

“What sound?” said Elena.

Pester jumped up and stared back in the direction they had come from.

“Fire,” he said.  “On your feet, now.  We’ve got to go.”

Elena and Mickey scrambled to their feet and started moving.

“Leave your bag and coat, Elena,” Pester said.  “You don’t need them now and you’ll move quicker without them.  Mickey, you’re going to have to go faster.”

Mickey looked over his shoulder.  He could see nothing at ground level but when he looked up he could see a red glow in the canopy of branches.  The sound he’d heard was the crackling of thin branches as they were being consumed by the flames.  The fire was spreading from tree to tree as easily as waves rolling across sand.

A sudden roar and flare of flame announced that a whole tree had just been claimed by the fire.  It wouldn’t be long before the flames caught up and overtook them.

“Don’t wait for me,” said Mickey.  “Make sure you get Elena out of here.”

Pester grabbed Elena’s hand and dragged her forward.  She turned to look at Mickey only to see him falling behind already.  Her anger at him died a little.  He was more fool than villain and didn’t deserve to end like this.  Mickey’s loyalty to his friend had been his undoing.  She couldn’t help him though.  Her own destiny was at risk.  He had brought his on himself.  Elena wasn’t going to throw her only chance away for a fool.

Mickey waved Elena on then glanced over his shoulder.  The flames had already made ground on him.  They weren’t close enough to start casting their heat around him yet but they would be soon enough.  Mickey turned back and put on a burst of speed but tripped over a branch.  He muffled a roar of pain as he landed.  Elena and Pester were only occasionally visible through the trees now.  At least she’ll get to the end, Mickey thought.  So, was this how it was all going to end for him, a shrivelled corpse gazing up through the charred remains of skeletal trees for the rest of time?  Mr. Jolly wouldn’t have had the result that he wanted but Mickey would still have failed.  Would that be enough for Mr. Jolly’s masters?  Mickey had a feeling that it wouldn’t; that there would be something else happen to him, some defilement of his body.  He wasn’t having that.

“I’m not done yet,” he growled through gritted teeth.  He pulled himself up against a tree trunk and launched forward.  The relief from the painkillers had been all too brief and each step lanced through him bringing tears to his eyes.

It wasn’t long before Mickey could feel heat on his head and shoulders.  A hot wind, created by the flames, was showering him with embers, sparking sibling fires all around him.  Mickey’s time was rapidly coming to an end.  The irony was that the trees were now becoming a little more separated, making his progress along the ground that bit easier.  This was cancelled out by the fact that the trees were larger and their branches had a broader spread which still kept them interlocked, allowing the fire to overtake Mickey from above.

Mickey had been keeping his eyes fixed on the ground a few feet ahead of him so that he didn’t trip over anything.  When he allowed himself a quick glance up he didn’t understand what he could see.  About fifty yards ahead of him was a grey wall.  Its size was immeasurable; it spread as high and as wide as Mickey could see.  Directly ahead, at the base of the wall was what looked like a sliding door; Pester and Elena were standing to one side.

What were they playing at?  Why hadn’t they gone through?

Mickey was too far away for his voice to be heard above the roar of the flames and the crack of the blazing branches.  Flaming twigs hit Mickey’s back and shoulders.  He redoubled his efforts to run but could feel himself becoming faint from the pain and exertion.

As Mickey got closer he could see that the door was an entrance to a lift.

“Get inside.  Don’t wait for me,” he called.

“We can’t,” shouted Pester.  “The door won’t open.”

If Mickey had been capable of thought he would have come up with something like, well that’s fucking great: all this effort just to be burnt to a crisp because the door won’t open.

As it was Mickey couldn’t think any of this; his mind was too focused on reaching the wall.  He crashed into it and slammed the heel of his hand into the lift call button.

“Open, you bastard,” he yelled.

Somewhere, high above him, machinery whirred into life.  The sound of an approaching lift car grew louder.  Elena cried with relief but Mickey and Pester both eyed the encroaching blaze.  It was going to be close, possibly too close.  Flaming brands were falling all around them now.  The forest floor was a carpet of flames.  The fire was greedily feeding on all the oxygen and the three travellers were beginning to struggle for breath.