Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (52 page)

There was another flash of fire from the ramparts. Jessie squeezed her eyes shut. Anne stared up at the wall. If they were going to murder her she wanted them to see she met it face-on.

The bullets struck home, thudding into the tarmac and spraying the Lurchers. More machine gun fire lit up the ramparts.

A Lurcher fell and didn’t get back up. The others were slowed, but not stopped. They ploughed on. Another Lurcher took one in the head and hit the deck.

The remaining Lurchers ran for cover behind a bullet-hole riddled BMW. Sparks glinted off the paintwork.

Anne and Jessie broke away, gaining a lead. They were almost at the front gate.

The BMW rocked back and forth with aggression.
There was the crack of snapping metal. The Lurchers emerged from behind the car, continuing the pursuit once more. A pair of Lurchers held a car door over their heads. Another Lurcher held the driver’s side front panel. The bullets rained down, but ricocheted off their makeshift shields.

A
nne and Jessie got to the front gate. It was shut. They hammered on the small door built into it with their bare fists. “Let us in! Open up! Let us in!”

The soldiers aimed lower, tearing flesh from the Lurchers
’ legs and snapping their bones. Another Lurcher fell. The remaining Lurchers kept coming.

And then the firing ceased. Looking up, Anne could see why. The angle was too steep for gunfire.

The three remaining Lurchers tossed aside their makeshift shields and staggered toward Anne and Jessie. The front Lurcher had a red baseball cap on back-to-front with ‘Liverpool FC’ written on it. A grandfather with blood thickly encrusted in his beard came up second. Third was the delicate frame of a Korean woman, half her scalp torn off, leaving the remainder of her hair to hang entangled about her face.

Exhausted and out of breath, Anne and Jessie backed away from the door. Their backs found a cold unflinching concrete wall.

“Please!” Jessie cried. “Please, open the door!”

Anne, beyond exhausted from their exertions, bunched her fists and flew at the baseball cap-wearing Lurcher. He caught her arm and pushed her away. Anne attacked again, but was easily pacified. Anne embraced Jessie, bone weary and exhausted.

“Close your eyes, Jess,” Anne said.

Jessie shook her head, tears rolling down her face.
“No.”

“
Close them.”

Jessie did.
Anne kissed her on the forehead, tasting dirt and sweat.

The Lurchers drew up before them.

“You do well… but now…” the baseball cap wearer said.

“…
you must join us… ” the grandfather said.

“
This will only hurt… a little,” the Korean woman said.

T
he Lurchers stepped forward, mouths opening wide and hands crooked into claws.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

There was the sound of bodies hitting the floor, and the putrid pus smell of a fallen Lurcher. Anne opened her eyes with hesitancy. The Lurchers lay crumpled on the ground. The metal door was open. A heavy black boot stepped forward, crushing the grandfather’s head, taking no more notice of the pus and congealed blood than if it were dog poo.

The figure crouched down beside them. The man had dark hair and eyes that bore no wrinkles because they never smiled nor frowned. The white stripes of the flag on his arm were dirty.

“I take it you never found the ocean?” the man said.

Anne peered closer at the man
’s face. “Baxter?”

His eyelids opened like heavy shutters. For a moment he wondered if he really had opened his eyes it was so dark. A thin crack of light escaped the door’s massive outline, spilling across the floor. Something dripped on his cheek, smelling of stale water. His eyes stung with the stench of decay, flies buzzing, feasting on something in the far corner. A pained scream echoed off hard stonewalls on the other side of the door, and then silence.

His head pounded like someone was hammering nails into his forehead. He paused, waiting for the pain to subside, then crawled to the door and pressed an eye to the crack. It was so thin and slight he couldn’t make anything out. His fingers brushed against the door’s rough wood surface, finding notches of what were probably words, but he ignored them and co
ntinued his search for the doorknob.

His
blind fingers clinked against something cold and hard. He felt at it. A hoop. He gripped it and pulled. The door didn’t move. He twisted and pushed, but still it did not budge. Someone grunted in pain, closer this time.

“Hey,” Jordan whispered, mouth to the crack.

No reply.

“Hey. Is someone out there?”

A shadow moved in front of the door, blocking out the light. Jordan froze, daring not to speak. The shadow grunted and withdrew.

Jordan emptied his pockets, relieved to find Queenie hadn’t emptied them, and found a short length of twine and a few mismatched buttons.

“Great. I can mend my jacket.”

He reached into his back pocket and took out the remaining chill pill. He felt it between his fingers. He shut his eyes and hesitated only a moment.

He put the pill on his tongue. It tasted sweet. He worked up the saliva and swallowed it.

Jordan breathed a sigh of relief. His eyelids felt heavy
. They drifted closed. The darkness took him. It wasn’t painful at all.

“Get… up,” a gruff staccato voice said, adding a vicious kick to his ribs as punctuation.

His surroundings were no less shocking than the first time, his senses no less choked by the cloying smells.
The door stood open, letting in damp light from flickering candles in the corridor, illuminating the hole he was in. Darkness was better.

“I’m alive?”
Jordan said, eyes wide with incredulity.

“Alive… not for… long…” Queenie said, smacking him hard over the head, causing his skull to ring with pain. “Get… up!”

Jordan got to his feet, dazed, and stumbled toward the door. “What did you do?” Jordan shouted at Queenie. “What the hell did you do?”

Queenie’s face curled with rage. He lashed out, smacking Jordan in the face, a flurry of blows from his one good arm, hefting it like a cudgel.

“You… move now! You… die… later!”

He shoved Jordan forward, impacting with the solid oak door opposite. A beaten voice from inside screamed, “I don’t know anymore! I don’t… Please! Just let me go! Please!”
Then it reverted to deep, weeping sobs and words without vowels.

Heavy doors lined the long tunnel on both sides as far as Jordan could see. There had to be forty cells, fifty maybe.
The tunnel was circular and long like an oversized cigar. The doors were built into recesses in the curved walls, cloaking them in shadow. Queenie kicked Jordan up the backside. He landed on his face in the sludge. He got up and walked down the tunnel.

They passed shuffling Lurchers, grouped together into squads of
three by ten. They watched Jordan with hollow sockets as he passed.

After what felt like hours of walking down identical tunnels, taking seemingly random turns, Jordan said, “Is this it? You’re going to walk me to death?”

“You… got… appointment,” Queenie grunted.

Lurchers lined every tunnel, and though Jordan often considered making a break for it, he knew he would never get far. Mournful classical music
reverberated off the walls from down the passage. As they walked, the music got louder. Jordan recognised it as Mozart. They followed the notes like breadcrumbs until the tunnel opened out into a large domed room.

Most of the tiny mosaic tiles on the roof had fallen and
smashed on the floor, crunching beneath their feet. The remaining tiles caught the dim candlelight like stars in a cloudless sky. Corridors led off in a dozen directions, each leading to an imperceptible darkness. The music blared from an antique record player, operated by a handle on the side. Presently, a blond Lurcher worked it, never once looking up. But Jordan’s attention was focused entirely on something else.

In the centre of the room sat an intimidating iron chair with straps on the arms and legs. Large maps adorned the room’s uneven surface like
bubbled wallpaper. Notes had been scribbled on them in a red ink scrawl Jordan couldn’t make out.

Queenie gestured to the chair and said, “Sit.”

“I’d prefer to stand.”

Queenie squared off against him. “I say sit.”

It was now or never. Jordan ran for a random tunnel. Queenie didn’t give chase, and only smiled, giving a deep-throated laugh, deafening in the acoustic dome. The moment Jordan got close to the exit a dozen Lurchers stepped into the light. Without breaking stride, Jordan changed direction and ran for another tunnel, and met another group of Lurchers. Queenie made a lazy lunge, but Jordan ducked under his arms easily, and ran for the tunnel they had come in from – no Lurchers had been there a moment before. No dice. It too was packed with Lurchers. He was surrounded.

Powerful arms enveloped him and carried him kicking and screaming to the
iron chair. Four pairs of rotten hands held him in place while Queenie employed the straps. Jordan pulled an arm free and punched Queenie in the face. Jordan was restrained again. Queenie pulled the straps so tight it cut off Jordan’s circulation.

“Not too tight,” a voice
said from somewhere behind Jordan. “We want our guest to be comfortable.” The voice was sleek, educated and young.

Queenie slackened the straps – a little – and moved beside a short row of half a dozen other Lurchers that stood to attention. They bowed their heads in respectful deference.

Something slithered on the edge of the shadows like snake scales, keeping itself cloaked in darkness.

“They didn’t overtax you too much, I trust? You are comfortable?” There was no hesitancy in his speech. No course edge. He sounded human.

“A cushion would be nice,” Jordan said. He strained against the straps, but they didn’t budge.

“Sarcasm.” Jordan thought he could hear the smile. “That’s good. Of all the things to learn about your genus,
humour is the hardest. Maybe you can teach me.”

“I’m funnier when I can stand up. Preferably with an AK47.”

Jordan watched as the figure approached the line of Lurchers, the hem of a black cape drifted lazily into the light. A hand – stark white as snow, fingers too long with swollen arthritic knuckles – reached out from the darkness and gently stroked Queenie.

Queenie met the hand accommodatingly. There was affection in his eyes. But when the hand brought Queenie’s head up, Jordan saw the real emotion. Fear, with the thinnest veneer of affection.

“You did well, my pet,” the figure said to Queenie in a revoltingly high-pitched voice. He could have been speaking to a dog. “He was difficult to find, but you found him, didn’t you? And as promised, I will give you your reward.” He clicked his disfigured fingers and a boy was brought into the room.

The boy was no more than eight years old. He wore tattered soiled rags and a dirty bandage over his right hand. T
ears formed tracks down his filthy face. He whimpered.

“Well?” the figure in sha
dow said. “Don’t you like him?”

Queenie nodded, eyes returning to the floor.

“Is there something else you want?”

The most imperceptible of movements as Queenie’s eye met Jordan’s.

“You want him? Our guest? Very well. But it all rests on his decision. You might get him, or he might go free. Understood?”

Queenie nodded.

The hand waved the boy away.

“Can I go home now?” the boy asked in a tremulous voice.

“You will join my pets for dinner, then rest.”

The boy smiled. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.” The boy was led away.

“It looks like you are very popular, Jordan. I must admit, you gave us quite the run around.”

The figure stepped into the light. He was no more than twelve or thirteen years old. His skin was pallid and tough-looking, thick like that of a honey badger. His small pigeon chest was exposed to the air, ribs straining against his skin, threatening to stab through with every movement. He wore a black vinyl costume with a high collar that stretched higher than his h
ead.

“Do you like my costume? I often get remarks about it. I
was bitten at a birthday party, you see. Halloween theme. I woke up wearing it and thought,” he shrugged, “kinda cool. It suits me, don’t you think?”

Jordan could barely keep the smile off his face. “It’s nice,” Jordan said. “But you have me at a loss. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Tim,” the boy said. “My friends call me Timmy.”

“May I call you Timmy?” Jordan
asked. He kept his voice light.

Tim beamed with undisguised joy. “Of course you can! I have so many friends now, but you can never have too many friends. That’s what my mum used to say.”