DEATHLOOP (52 page)

“
Zachariah… help me… here I am, help me through. Catch me Zachariah, take me, here, here, Zachariah, Zachariah, please, here I am!
”

Crawling towards him came a baby, her pink romper suit torn at the knees, in one hand a rattle.

“
Help me, Zachariah
,” the baby seemed to say as she climbed up onto his shoe. A pudgy torso thwacked into him, its fall displacing the baby, tipping her onto her back like an upturned turtle, then the thump of a booted foot in his face, the continued cries, his name flying around like dead leaves in a storm.

All round him, littering the tracks, bodies and amputated body parts lay like landed fleshy fish, twitching, fighting the advent of death. Some had stopped twitching, some like the lazy movements of landlocked seals, their heads turning, struggling to get a better perspective of their predicament, mourning the loss of their limbs, casting around to see where they had got to and terrified, that like Humpty Dumpty they would never be put back together again.

Zack’s breathing had long since deserted him, and this time it felt like his feet had grown roots, spreading deep beneath the ground in a sprawling network, holding him fast, foiling escape. Hamstrung, all he could do was pray for this horror to end, or for his life to end, whichever came sooner.

A tranquillity settled, punctuated from a distance by a little moan or a yelp, or the continued sobbing of heartbreak, but eventually these too died away. Then, as an afterthought, the whistling of a slice of liver, it slapped against his face, sliding off his chin it dropped onto the baby’s cheek, leaving a smear of blood across it. Finally, slithering off the baby’s face too, and breading itself with dust from the ground until it was still.

Quietness then, followed by distant sirens as word spread, as far off able bodied people responded to the calls of the almost dead. The acrid smell of burning flesh wafted past and settled up his nose making him splutter, as though his airways had just been cleared. He was breathing again, and the roots under his feet relaxed their grip, allowing him to tilt forward. Free of restraint at last, Zack scrambled into the bushes and pulled himself up onto the path as policemen ran past. But Zack streaked off the other way, fear driving him. He knew he lived somewhere but he couldn’t remember where or how to get there. His name was Zack Fortune, he knew that, and he was alive, he knew that too, but he could recall nothing else. Shock had done for him.

Zack raced through unfamiliar streets in despair. Snippets of information broke through the fog, and he latched onto each one, hopeful they might connect with something, something of use. A girl called Clarissa was waiting for him in a church. A small Jewish man had fallen down flights of stairs and was about to die. A black security guard was barring his way into a tall building as a fat women laughed at him from behind a desk. A cell door was shutting, and a policeman looked in at him through a peephole and smiled.

He couldn’t remember walking to the rail track but neither could he remember arriving there by car, or by train. The sirens had stopped, and glancing at placid people walking by, they seemed to suggest no knowledge of the recent disaster.

“There’s been an accident, did you hear?” he called to a couple coming the other way.

“Oh yeah?” said the man, “where exactly?”

“At the station, two trains collided head on.”

“Which station?”

“I’m not sure, but near here, somewhere near here.”

They didn’t believe him, he knew that. They thought he was mad, and someone else had thought he was mad too, someone called Sam. Maybe he was mad, that would explain it. He yelped with fear as he felt something brush against his leg… the baby… it had to be the baby! But it wasn’t the baby, it was a plastic carrier bag that had wrapped itself round his ankle in a sudden breeze. He knew a man once who collected carrier bags, thousands of them, now what was his name?

Then from nowhere a landslide of memory came back with such force his legs buckled and he fell headlong into the gutter, catching his chin on the curb. He scrambled to his feet again and checked his pockets. He would buy something to calm himself down. He would drink alcohol and calm himself down. He raced into a shop and pointed at a bottle on the top shelf. The Sikh shopkeeper looked unsure, but gave him the bottle bewildered at the clutch of notes that Zack threw over the counter in payment.

Zack left the shop, gulping down whisky that burnt the back of his throat and made off towards a main road. Taxis stopped sometimes, he knew that. If you waved at them sometimes they stopped. Zack also knew he had to get home, he needed to hide. He could remember everything now and although it was a relief in one way, in another it was anything but because the impetus was gathering pace. There had been cease fires, there had even been periods of calm but he couldn’t ignore this cancer now as it ransacked his life, devouring everything good and leaving behind rank defecation. The only way he could think of stopping its progress was to get into bed, pull the covers over his head and remain behind locked doors. No one could be trusted, no one.

Jason was just about to head off home. He’d been on patrol outside Claremont most of the day. Two people had asked him why he was there and he had told them various lies. One man said he would call the police if he didn’t stop standing outside his flat all day, casing the joint. Jason didn’t know what he meant and told him so, but the man just laughed at that, asking Jason if he thought he was born yesterday. The Asian family in Londis didn’t seem to like him hanging around either. They said they would call the police too. Jason told them that it was a free country and he could hang around wherever he liked.

When he saw Zack, he knew something was seriously wrong. He had a bottle of whisky in his hand and he was drinking from it. That wasn’t like Zack at all. About fifty yards away from Jason, Zack stopped, and glared at him. He looked frightened.

“Keep away from me,” he said, “what have I said about you being here.”

Jason said: “I’ll help you… whatever it is… I’ll help you.”

“
I don’t need your help for the last time
,” said Zack, rummaging in his pocket for his keys. “Keep away from me… just keep away from me or I’ll kill you.”

“What did you say?”

“I said if you don’t keep away from me I’ll kill you, and I mean it.”

With Zack’s words came an eerie calm that seemed to sweep right through Jason. “You’d kill your only son, is that it?”

For a split second… for a divine second, Zack thought he might have misheard, but he knew he hadn’t.

“You’re mad, you’re completely insane. I don’t have a son.”

“I’m Angie’s boy, you’re my Dad.”

Zack snatched a desperate breath as he felt his heart down tools. It was as though it was struggling to assess this new piece of information and while it did so, all plans of keeping him alive were on hold. Zack put out a hand to steady himself as his knees gave, convinced he was about to faint.

“We’ll be a family now and have fun,” said Jason.

Zack backed off terrified at the idea, terrified at just about everything now.

“I’ll stay here and stand guard like I always do!” said Jason, shouting after him, “I’ll stand guard, don’t worry, I won’t let anyone in!”

Although a taxi stopped for Zack, the cabbie seemed to regret his decision almost straight away. He glanced back at him a few times, giving him the once over, but although his fare seemed to be on the verge of freaking out big time, at Kings Cross the cabbie was surprised to be the grateful recipient of a bunch of notes as Zack dived from his cab and dashed off.

This time Zack knew he would find her as he charged up and down outside the station, then on the concourse, then in side streets and now in a back alley. And here she was… staggering towards him as her trick slid off, whatever urge that had driven him here apparently satisfied by his three minutes of sexual contact in a stinking doorway.

“Angie!” he said, “it’s me, Zack.”

Angie gawped, her mind struggling into recall, laboriously slow now, dulled by twenty years of Class A drugs.

“
Zack
?” she said, straightening her vomit stained top, and patting her matted hair in place - the heartbreaking remnants of a pride which hadn’t quite left her. Her eyes were glazed and her speech was slurred, clumps of hair had fallen out and all her top teeth were missing.

“I’m sorry, Angie,” he said, biting back tears, “I’m so sorry.”

Angie was confused by the apology, she had never expected much from life so had never felt particularly deprived.

“Did you have our baby? Did you have my child?”

It seemed to take her a moment to remember and at first she didn’t seem sure. “I think so, yes, but I don’t know where he is. They took him away.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“In the end…”

“What did you say?”

“That you didn’t want him, or me, that you had other things to do.”

“What else, what else did you say?”

“That we weren’t wanted either, you and me, not really. They said he’d be better off somewhere else so I couldn’t fuck him up no more.”

“Can I make all this better… what I’ve done, or not done…”

“Course you fucking can’t,” said Angie, “but you can give me what you got,” she said, rooting in his pockets.

“Tell me his name,” said Zack, pulling everything out and handing it over.

“Jason,” she said, heading off, “I called him Jason.”

There was only one person Zack wanted to be with and as Angie had taken all his money and his bank cards Zack set off for Baker Street on foot. Straight away he noticed people giving him a wide birth. A couple with a small child stepped off the curb and into the road to avoid him. The child pointing at Zack, in awe.

“Look!” said the child, “look at his wings!”

People stared out at him from the top decks of buses, their heads craning to get a better view. A taxi driver did a double take and hit the car in front with a crunch. One van just stopped, its driver getting out and standing in the street to gaze after him. Zack started to run, ignoring the shouts and the waves, the mass curiosity. A large office block loomed up, built from sheer sheets of dark glass. Zack slowed, knowing this would confirm it, watching his reflection come into close-up. He stopped, unable to believe the image that confronted him. He reached round and ran his hand across his back but he couldn’t feel them. He could see them now, but it was as if they weren’t there.

“Can you see them, Sam!” he said as he pushed into the flat, down the hallway and into the living room where he ran up and down, his arms out wide beside him.

“See what?” said Sam.

“
My wings of course!
Can’t you see them? You must be able to see them, look, here on my back… aren’t they amazing!”

Sam stared at his old friend, crestfallen, his worst fears had come to pass, Zack had completely lost it. “Sit down, mate,” said Sam, “sit down.”

“My wings won’t let me sit down,” said Zack just before Sam pushed him back onto the Chesterfield. “Now you’ve crushed them, Sam, don’t do that,” he said, jumping up again.

Sam filled a glass with a full measure of whisky and squirted a shot of soda into it. “Drink that,” he demanded.

“There was a train crash, Sam, and everyone wanted me to help them as usual, calling out my name, oh and a baby as well, a baby that could speak, how about that? She sat on my foot, but she had a hole in her head. You can’t see them, can you, my wings, but Veronica did and everyone’s been pointing at them in the street.” Then a change of gear, Zack’s voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve got a confession to make, I want you to know something, it’s important that you know, but don’t hate me, Sam, when I tell you…”

“Unlikely, I’ve tried often enough…”

“Richard never touched me, not once, other guys did but not him. In fact, he was kindness itself. I killed him because he was going to marry my mother, that’s all. I didn’t want him in my mother’s bed. I was perfect yet still she preferred him to me – an old man who walked with a stick - so I drowned him in the lake. He didn’t shout out you know, or beg for help or anything, it was like he didn’t want to cause a fuss… he just splashed around out of his depth, unable to swim because of his paralysis, watching me, watching him drown. I did terrible things to the other guys as well, I poisoned one and he had to get his stomach pumped and all the time my mother took the rap, and I didn’t care, I really didn’t care because of the rejection.”

“Because of what rejection?”

“She rejected me for them, Sam, don’t you see?”

“No she didn’t mate, not really. Another kind of love, that’s all, like you and me and me and Clarissa.”

“But it was never equal, like with us, they always came first. I should have come first, I was her son for fuck’s sake! I can’t bear rejection, Sam, even now.”

“I know you can’t.”

“Is that a weakness?”

“Maybe that’s what attracted you to me - you knew I’d never walk away.”

“And remember Angie, I pissed off and left her, and all these years I felt such guilt, her mother said there was no child, she’s a crackhead now and all because of me, shagging in shop doorways at Kings Cross… but there
was
a child… Jason. He’s my son.”

Sam just stared, willing it to be a misunderstanding, unable to respond to such a ludicrous notion. His mouth opened but it shut again pretty quickly.

“So there we are, another monster I’ve created. And Susan wants to kill me, and you know what, Sam… it’s true what Barbara Quinn said, I’m going to die.”

“Bollocks!” said Sam, “bollocks to everyone, you’re not going to die.”

“I am, I can feel it, it’s like I’m hurtling down hill and the brakes have failed.”

Sam snatched the glass from Zack’s hand and took hold of him.

“Stop this for fuck’s sake, Fortune, you’re talking bollocks.”

“I love you, Sam Stein, do you know that?”

“I’ve always known it, and I love you, and you’ve always known that.”

“Why do you think that is?” said Zack, suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity.