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Authors: Debbie Moon

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Falling (27 page)

BOOK: Falling
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Looking back, she saw DiFlorian catch a hold on the jagged edge of a place she didn't even recognise, orange-skied and whirlwinded by dust. She looked into it like a mirror, just for a moment; then she had to accept that she didn't belong there, and the fragment twisted from her hand and vanished into the dark.

It was a pity she was never going to get to report back to Warner, the bastard. He'd have loved this story. Well, Mr Warner, once I'd traced the minions of evil to the secret laboratory, I killed them – and then, as the laws of physics seem to require of dead ReTracers, we all ended up Adrift…

Maybe one day someone would realise that it wasn't a mistake but a higher level, a short-cut through time, a new way to play the game. The game that Schrader and friends were playing – that she'd so recently learned – whether they realised it or not. A whole new level to be exploited, a whole new way to waste official time and money.

Not to mention your own. Spending your life going backwards, revising the opening chapters and forgetting to live the middle and the end. An evolutionary dead end.

I want to go home.

Even above the wind-rush, she could hear Miss Handbag swearing. Colourful vocabulary, bet she hadn't learned that in the manicurist's…

But she was way behind, way above, barely visible through the flicker of fragmented realities. She was irrelevant. It was Schrader who was the problem.

He was catching up with her.

Not that he was doing anything, physically, but this place didn't seem to work by the normal rules. No, he was definitely accelerating, and any moment now…

Jude reached out and snatched at the jagged slice of time at her right hand. Solid. Cold. Flickering with trapped movement. A jumble of ferns and grey sky and women's laughter. It would only take a moment's concentration, a moment's will, and she could tumble through it like Alice through the rabbit hole, thrown stunned and trembling into an alien world.

Not yet.

Averting her eyes from the shimmering summer's day she held between forefinger and thumb, she hurled it at Schrader.

It smacked flat against his crooked knee and shattered, spilling shredded hysteria into the up-draught like shards of glass, bright and brittle. Several gashed his face on the way, but he only blinked away the blood – yellow blood, releasing the scent of roses and the cries of fledgling birds on a warm spring day – and reached for her.

She ducked. Grabbed another fragment out of the nothingness and hit him again. A fragment of pain and someone screaming abuse in a language she'd never heard before. Nice shot. Right in the chest. Must have hurt.

But he understood the game now. He lifted one hand, waiting for something to drift within reach. Then lunged at the next flicker of light, caught it, hurled it like a discus. Flames danced across its surface, and Jude knew instinctively that it wasn't going to be a good place to end up, dead or undead.

She leant back into the airstream, and it hit a passing fragment before it hit her, shattering a pseudo-operatic chorus of monks in a shower of screams. Diamond-edged shrapnel flowered between them, pushing them apart. She drew her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself a smaller target. Schrader was shouting, curses ripped from his mouth by the wind, as he lunged, fingers clawing for her eyes.

Little Miss Handbag slammed into him from above. A tangle of legs, arms and immaculate stockings laddering under Schrader's nails, pawing and scrambling like an erotic carving, locked together as they fell and fell and fell–

And, looking down, Jude saw the light and knew that they weren't going to fall forever.

Schrader was screaming – screaming into the light, the nuclear-white thunderflash brilliance, and all she could think of was helicopters and music and the world in flames –

This is the end, beautiful friend,
Warner, I'll be back to haunt you, I swear –

No safety or surprise, the end,
dying, finally, and still all my brain has to offer is old movies –

I'll never look into your eyes…

Hurtling up at her out of the dark, a half-familiar face frowned concern at her from the brittle surface of a slice of time.

Again.

EPILOGUE

If she thought back, just a few seconds further, she ought to be able to remember the moment the bodies actually hit the ground.

Because there they were, only four paces away. Just a glimpse of splayed limbs and crushed torsos flowering blood onto a dirty pavement. People pressing in around it now, coming out of the office block foyer or peeling away from the kerbside stalls to gather and stare. Not move, not help; just stare. As if that was a valid response, as if their rapt attention was a necessary part of the process.

‘Mass executive suicide,' one of the stallholders muttered, rolling his eyes theatrically to the iron-grey heavens. ‘For goodness' sake. Thought we'd done with that when most of them moved out to the Hursts.'

‘And who's responsible for the clearing-up?' a man in a greasy apron growled. ‘I got a living to make. People don't buy fajitas if they have to step over bodies to get to them.'

‘You could put ‘em all in the fillings,' the woman at his elbow suggested, triggering a ripple of nervous laughter. ‘Seems a pity to waste them.'

Jude blinked.

What the hell am I doing here?

A thin trickle of blood ran from beneath an impact-scuffed leather handbag and down into the gutter beside her.

Didn't that look familiar?

A hand fell on her shoulder and she turned. Remembering.

All of it. Warner, Miss Leather Shoes and Handbag, her mother and the tower, Little East Bankside, a hotel room, a river of death, a hole in time and always falling…

The young man with his hand on her shoulder took a step back, brown eyes widening. The eyes of the young man on the Ulti-Mall sliproad. The rest taller, broader across the shoulders, neatly honed in the way that only a new incarnation could be, before good living and bad living and living in general had screwed it up.

‘Fitch,' she said, and tears welled behind her eyelids.

The thin mouth parted. A smile. ‘You haven't called me that for a while.'

Nothing to be said to that, only questions. She seized his hand, swinging him away from the thinning crowd. ‘Let's get away from here.'

And then she saw them. Just faces in the crowd, as blank and puzzled as she knew her own must be. Schrader, frowning down on a lost shoe as if some part of him knew it belonged on his foot. Little Miss. DiFlorian, even, rubbing her eyes as if to scour away the sight of a body too familiar and yet undeniably not her.

This is what she told me on the roof at the Pigsty. Trying to give her the vital clue. ‘Unless we can find a world where we weren't born us.'

Where someone else inherited my rogue gene and learned to travel time at will, and died for it, and I…

And I am someone else entirely.

Someone who's finally free of the temptation to remake their life continually, to keep polishing every moment until it's artifically glittering and perfect. Someone who just lives, like everyone else, making mistakes and handling the consequences and hopefully doing a little better next time.

‘Jude…?'

Concern rumpled Fitch's unfamiliar face; his arm closed around her shoulders, a gesture so intimate she almost shivered.

Across the crowd, Schrader met her gaze, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Then he nodded very slightly, as if thanking her for something, and turned away.

Stepping back, further into Fitch's embrace, Jude whispered, ‘Yeah. Definitely time to go.'

He didn't let go until they were a full three blocks away, striding through scattered bystanders towards the distant ruins of Marble Arch – mostly scaffolding, rickety metalwork and warning signs.

As she turned back to see if anyone had taken charge of the tragedy yet, not-exactly-Fitch said, ‘You're in trouble, aren't you?'

‘Yes,' she spluttered, hysteria rising at the sudden realisation that she probably was.

He just nodded. ‘What can I do?'

Jude leant into the warmth, the weight of his embrace. Good question.

‘Jude?'

‘Listen…' What to call this stranger/lover/friend? ‘Honey. It's like this.'

You're surely not going to tell him the truth?

Whatever that is.

‘There's, ah, a kind of memory loss that affects ReTracers. Wipes out chunks of recent memory. I mean, I remember who I am and everything, but I don't know how I got here today, and the last few hours, well, days…' She searched that immaculate face for clues. ‘Longer, maybe.'

He bit his lip. ‘You do remember taking me in for the switchback?'

Jude shook her head.

‘You did agree. I wouldn't have done it if –'

‘I know. I mean, I know that I should have. I know I must have. Hell, you know what I mean.'

Somewhere under a strange face, a familiar Fitch smiled.

‘So. How long ago did you, erm…?'

He took her by the elbow, as if afraid she was about to stumble. ‘Jude. I think you should see a doctor. A specialist.' Inspiration sparked in his eyes. ‘If this is something that affects ReTracers, maybe I should take you in to GenoBond?'

‘No. That would be a bad mistake. A fatal mistake. All I need to be filled in on what I've missed. Oh, and then we need to pack, and get the hell out of here. Ever thought about going north?'

Fitch looked vaguely alarmed. ‘Manchester?'

‘I was thinking more like Helsinki.'

‘Ah,' he said. ‘That kind of trouble. Come on. We can talk about… what you don't remember, on the way.'

Jude squinted back up the street. The last few ghouls were giving up, curiosity sated, and fading back into the crowd. People from inside the office block were taking charge of the bodies, ordering men in caretaker's overalls to bundle them in plastic and move them inside. Somehow, their interest didn't surprise her, but she couldn't quite remember why.

‘Who was it that jumped?' Fitch asked softly. ‘Someone you knew?'

Jude turned away, forcing herself to smile. ‘No. No one I really knew at all.'

ABOUT HONNO

Honno Welsh Women's Press was set up in 1986 by a group of women who felt strongly that women in Wales needed wider opportunities to see their writing in print and to become involved in the publishing process. Our aim is to develop the writing talents of women in Wales, give them new and exciting opportunities to see their work published and often to give them their first ‘break' as a writer.

Honno is registered as a community co-operative. Any profit that Honno makes is invested in the publishing programme. Women from Wales and around the world have expressed their support for Honno. Each supporter has a vote at the Annual General Meeting.

For more information and to buy our publications, please write to Honno at the address below, or visit our website:

www.honno.co.uk

Honno

Unit 14, Creative Units, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. SY23 3GL

Honno Friends

We are very grateful for the support of the Honno Friends: Gwyneth Tyson Roberts, Jenny Sabine, Beryl Thomas.

For more information on how you can become a Honno Friend, see: http://www.honno.co.uk/friends.php

Published by Honno

‘Alisa Craig, Heol y Cawl, Dinas Powys

South Glamorgan, Wales, CF6 4AH

© Debbie Moon 2003

The right of Debbie Moon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

print ISBN: 9781870206617
ebook ISBN: 9781909983106

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without clearance from the publishers.

Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council

The author would like to thank Patricia Duncker for all her help in developing and editing the text.

Cover design: Graham Preston
Cover image: shutterstock

BOOK: Falling
10.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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