Dead Man Running (15 page)

He twisted the valve. Bubbles of heliox erupted from the top of the canister and ascended to the top of the fridge like millions of tiny hot-air balloons. When they hit the roof, they merged, becoming an enormous shimmering superbubble which expanded down towards Six.

The noise hit him as soon as his head broke the surface  – the hissing of the tank, the gurgling of the bubbles, the roaring of the water flooding out from under the fridge. He quickly twisted the valve back – no need to waste a whole canister – and pulled off his mask. He coughed as the smell of the filthy sea water hit his nostrils.

It wouldn't be long before he'd used up all the oxygen in here. There was no time to waste. He pulled out his radio and pushed down the button, hoping it was as waterproof as it claimed. ‘King,' he said. ‘It's Six. Can you hear me?' His voice was unexpectedly squeaky. Of course, he thought. The helium.

‘Six!' King said. ‘What the hell is going on?'

‘I'm in a fridge at the bottom of the ocean. There are hundreds of the living dead down here. And Ten is Double Tap.'

‘
What?
'

‘Six.' Ace's voice came over the line. Six's heart kicked in his chest. ‘That's not possible.'

‘It's true.' Six said. ‘He –'

‘I can alibi him for several of the murders,' Ace said. ‘And after you broke Double Tap's nose and I shot him, Ten was on the scene immediately, and he didn't have either of those injuries.'

‘That doesn't make any sense,' Six said.

‘I tested all of the blood on the floor,' Ace said. ‘And – I'm sorry, Six – but it all matches your DNA signature.'

‘But you shot him! I saw it! He must have left some blood at the scene.'

‘I didn't say it was your blood,' Ace said. ‘I said it had the same DNA as yours.'

Finally Six saw what she was getting at. ‘No,' he said. ‘That can't be right.'

‘We're sure, Six,' King said. ‘Kyntak is Double Tap.'

BETRAYED

‘Every murder happened outside the Deck,' King said, ‘until he attacked you. He wasn't able to get inside until we recreated you and put your biometrics into the scanner. After that, he could come and go as he liked.'

Six remembered Kyntak's sudden appearance in Jack's office. The bullet wounds on his chest.
I used to run this place. They can't keep me out.

‘That can't be right,' Six said again, hearing the lack of conviction in his voice. He didn't want to believe that his twin brother could have changed so much in four years. But everything seemed to fit. He already knew that Kyntak had rebelled against the Deck and started taking justice into his own hands.

Stop looking, Six. You won't like what you find.

‘But why would he try to kill me?' Six cried. ‘Three days ago he saved my life from Nai!'

‘Yes,' Ace said. ‘And then you saved hers from him. You made him mad.'

Why did you swim off?

I went after Nai. I didn't want her getting away again.

‘I saw him this morning,' Six said. ‘If he's Double Tap, why didn't he kill me?'

‘Did he give you anything? Something that might have a tracker in it, so that he could hunt you down later?'

The weight-belt. Six stared at it in the failing light of the flare.

He could feel that there was less and less oxygen in the heliox. No matter how much he sucked into his lungs, they always felt only half full. He didn't have time to argue about this.

‘Look,' he said. ‘ChaoSonic is down here, using the power from our seismic sensor to turn dead bodies into slaves. And the only thing we know for sure is that they want to capture Kyntak. So what are we going to do about that?'

Thump
.

Six's eyes snapped sideways towards the sound. Something had hit the fridge, hard. His first thought was that the ceiling was collapsing – if it was, he could be buried under the rubble in minutes. But it sounded like something had hit the
side
of the fridge, not the top.

‘They've found me,' he whispered.

‘Who's found you?'

‘The Revived! I have to go.' Six switched off the radio, hooked it back onto his belt, and listened. There was no other sound but the lapping of the water against the walls. Six was just starting to think that he might have imagined the sound, when –

Thump.
The fridge shuddered with the force of the impact. Whoever was hitting it, they weren't hitting it by accident.

It was getting darker, but Six couldn't tell if that was the dying flare or if he was beginning to black out in the oxygen-depleted air. He put his mask back on, and checked the gauge. He had ninety minutes' worth left.

He couldn't just stay under here and hope they would forget about him. Even if there were only one or two out there, surely they would have the strength to lift the fridge off him.

They're anchored to the ground, Six thought, and most of my skin is covered. As long as I keep my hands and my head away from those rings, I should be able to fight past them, run to the window and swim up out of reach. But for this to work, he couldn't give them time to corner him. He was going to have to surprise them. Six braced himself against the roof of the fridge and took another deep breath.

Three, two, one. Go!

He stood, hurling the fridge off himself like the lid of a jack-in-the-box. He started running towards the exit, then risked a glance back over his shoulder.

He'd made a mistake. The thumping hadn't been a dead slave.

It was a shark.

The shark seemed impossibly big in the confines of the kitchen. Its belly scraped along the floor while its dorsal fin almost touched the ceiling. Its eyes, black and empty, were the size of tennis balls.

Six vaulted over the bar and kept running towards the window, but he knew it would do no good. He couldn't outrun a shark under water. He couldn't outfight it either – its massive jaws could easily cut him in half. And hiding wasn't an option, since the animal would be able to smell the electrochemical reactions in his body. Some sharks were able to detect half a billionth of a volt from kilometres away. That must be how this one had found him under the fridge.

Whichever way he looked at it, he was going to die.

Six picked up a chair as he ran and whirled around, pointing the legs at the approaching behemoth. The shark's maw opened wide, exposing row after row of serrated teeth.

Six stabbed the chair forwards into the shark's open mouth like a lion tamer, hoping to choke it. The jaws snapped closed and the chair was smashed to splinters. Six just barely pulled his hands out of the way in time.

He dropped to the floor and swim-crawled under the nearest table. The shark tried to follow him and its nose pushed the table towards the window. Six slid along the floor ahead of it, his feet braced against the table legs.

The table hit another, which hit another, and soon there was a whole train of furniture being swept across the room. Six clambered through the forest of moving chair and table legs, trying to put as much distance between himself and the shark as possible – but the snapping teeth were destroying the furniture faster than he was climbing it.

The chair he was hanging on to tipped over as it fell out the window. Six scrabbled at the floor as he was pushed towards the void. The shark's mouth stretched open in a silent roar as it rushed towards Six's kicking legs –

– and then he was out, tumbling from the hotel window and plummeting through the darkness.

The shark exploded into the open water above him, thrashing through the fractured tables. Immediately it seemed to sense Six below, and dove down.

Six landed on his back. His broken ribs were on fire. He was left with nowhere to go as the shark descended towards him, its teeth like a falling chandelier.

Six tore his last flare off his belt, lit it, and shoved it up into the shark's nostril.

The shark's tail whipped left and right like a severed electrical cable as its brain was overloaded. Its eyes rolled wildly in its head. Six scrambled aside as its deadly jaws slammed shut over and over again, churning up a storm of muck.

He ran, feet slipping on the muddy road. He had no idea how long it would take the shark to recover. He needed to find something big enough to hide in, but small enough that the shark wouldn't fit – and strong enough that it couldn't chew through the walls to get to him.

The cars parked along the street looked too flimsy. The buildings all had empty window frames the shark could fit through. There was nowhere Six could –

Wait. There was something big and flat on the road up ahead. An armoured car, designed to withstand attacks from power tools and explosions and who knew what else. He might be safe in there – if it was unlocked.

He charged towards it in a furious dash that was half breaststroke, half Olympic sprint. His desperate breaths hissed in his ears.

The light behind him went out.

The shark must have bitten the flare in half, or swallowed it. It would be after Six again in a matter of seconds.

He ran through the blackness, arms outstretched, until he crashed into the side of the armoured truck. Sliding his hands across the metal, he fumbled for the handle. He could almost feel the shark, racing through the gloom behind him.

There! The handle. Unlocked. Six pulled the door open, jumped into the back of the truck, and slammed it closed behind him.

He stayed still for a moment, listening. There were no thumps from outside – yet.

This was an armoured car, so maybe there were weapons inside. Six ran his hands along the floor, looking for something he could use.

The first thing he found was a limp hand. There was a dead body lying on the floor. Grimacing, Six felt his way up the arm to the shoulder, then down to the belt, looking for the holster of a gun or baton or something. There were no weapons, but there were flares. Six pulled one off and lit it. In the flickering red glare, he got a look at the body's face. It was Ten, still unconscious, still wearing his oxygen mask.

Six's eyes narrowed. Wait, he thought. That means –

He looked up and saw that the truck was filled with the Revived. They were all sitting on benches, staring at him.

Six dove back towards the door, blind panic filling his heart.

Something grabbed the back of his neck. The numbness spread instantly, warm and tingling, as the tranquilliser leaked into his arteries.

It's over, he realised. They've got me. I'm dead.

Everything was fading, fading. Six thought he could hear soothing voices, distant, as though they were leaking through from another dimension. He couldn't tell what they were saying. Everything was getting brighter and less distinct, like a Polaroid developing in reverse.

The last thing Six heard was the water vibrating as the truck's engine started, and the rumbling of the wheels as it drove away across the ocean floor.

AWAKE

My alarm was cheeping like a curious bird. Every couple of seconds, just as I was about to drift back to sleep, there'd be another
beep
and I'd be half awake again.

Something was different. Something new. An obnoxious orange glow, keeping me conscious. I tried to shut my eyes to screen it out, and then I realised that they
were
shut. The light was coming from behind my eyelids.

‘Tom? Can you hear me?'

Someone was in my bedroom with me. I didn't recognise his voice.

‘Tom, if you can hear me, move your eyelids again.'

I tried to tell him to get lost, but my mouth wouldn't move. There was something jammed in it, something hard and plastic. Alarmed, I tried to spit it out, but it was strapped to my face – and there was a tube, going all the way down my throat and into my lungs.

I gasped, choked. My eyes shot open and the light blinded me, huge and white and dazzling. Brighter than anything I'd ever seen. What was happening to me?

‘Tom! Relax! Try to breathe normally,' the man said. Then he shouted over his shoulder, ‘Can I get some help in here?'

I could feel the vomit rushing up my throat. The tube blocked it and I gagged. I thrashed around in my bed, which I now realised wasn't my bed at all, but a hospital bunk. The EKG that I'd mistaken for my alarm clock was beeping faster now, to match my racing heart. Someone was standing over me, blurry in the all-swallowing light, pulling at the tube in my throat. I coughed and gurgled as it slithered out like a wet snake.

‘What the hell?' someone else said. A woman. ‘He's awake!'

‘I can see that,' yelled the person who'd pulled out the tube. ‘Give me a hand!'

They both hauled me over onto my side, and I puked into a bucket that the man was holding. No food came out – just spit and bile, splattering the bottom of the bucket.

I tried to say, What's happened to me? but only a dry croak came out. My vocal cords felt like rusty girders.

The woman and the man rolled me onto my back. I could see a bit better now. Both were in hospital scrubs. The man carried the bucket out of the way while the woman said, ‘Tom, can you hear me?'

My name isn't Tom, I tried to scream, but my sandpapery mouth wouldn't shape the words.

The woman was in her late thirties. Wiry, with the kind of muscle tone I'd seen in dancers. Her face was full of more concern than strangers normally showed for me.

‘Tom, blink twice if you understand what I'm saying.'

When I blinked the first time, my eyes stayed shut. It seemed like such a huge effort to open them.

‘No,' the woman said. ‘Damn it, stay with me.'

My eyelids were prised open and she shone a pen-light into them. I recoiled against the pillow. Why was everything so bright?

‘Follow the light, if you can,' the woman said.

I tried. My eyes watered as I stared at the bright dot.

The woman switched it off. ‘I know you're confused,' she said. ‘But it's okay. You're completely safe. I'm sure Nurse Nguyen is calling your parents right now – they'll be here soon.'

Parents? I thought. You've got me confused with someone else!

I was dizzy and thirsty and hungry. I'd never felt so helpless.

‘I'm Doctor Erist,' she was saying. ‘I've been helping you get better.'

I'd heard her voice before. She was the doctor from that medical drama that was always on TV. What was a fake doctor doing here? Was this a fake hospital?

‘I need to test your reflexes, okay?' Erist said. She lifted my right hand and prodded my fingertip with a pen. The pain was harsh, immediate, fleeting. ‘Can you feel that? Blink if you can.'

I blinked.

‘You've had an accident,' she said, poking another finger. ‘You came off your friend's motorcycle. Do you remember that?'

I didn't. All my recollections were hazy, dreamlike. I thought I could remember –

‘Surabaya,' I whispered. My voice sounded like rustling leaves.

‘I'm sorry?' Erist looked puzzled. ‘Can you repeat that?'

‘I was at the bottom of the ocean,' I said. ‘And . . . sharks, there were sharks . . .'

‘It'll take you a little while to adjust,' Erist said. ‘You've been asleep for a very long time.'

‘You're the doctor,' I said, ‘from that TV show.'

She looked confused for a moment, and then pleased. ‘You recognise my voice?' she asked.

I nodded slightly.

‘I
knew
it!' she said. ‘I told them you could hear me, but they didn't listen. Make sure you mention that to Doctor O'Connell.'

She pulled the sheet off my body and tapped her pen against one of my toes. ‘Can you feel this?'

I barely heard her. I was looking down at my torso, unable to believe what I was seeing. My chest wasn't bruised – there was no sign that my ribs had ever been broken. My older scars, all the bullet holes and knife wounds, they were gone too. There was no hole in my hand where –

– my sister, she shot it –

– but that recollection seemed less real with every passing second.

‘How long?' I said. This sort of healing would have taken weeks, even months.

‘It's now the first of September, 2012,' Erist said. ‘You've been unconscious since the thirty-first of March, 2006.'

That made no sense. That was in the
past
. That was before I was even born.

I looked over at the window and saw something impossible. The light that had awoken me was still there, coming from something I'd never seen before, yet something I recognised instantly.

The sun. In a clear blue sky.

Seconds pass or hours or maybe even days. The drugs, they're making it hard to tell. But the light never goes away.

The people talking to me are as easy to ignore as a TV with the volume down. It's like being on a stage, blinded by a spotlight. I can't see if I have an audience, or just empty chairs in the darkness.

I know I've had a nightmare, but which is it? The one where I'm trapped and weak and confined to a hospital bed by my own shrivelled muscles, or the one where the sky is always grey and no-one can be trusted and even the dead still have work to do?

Every time the ceiling is nearly in focus it spins out of reach again. I feel sick, like I might throw up, but there's nothing left in my stomach and they're still talking to me, why are they still talking to me –

Tom? Are you okay?

Six? Are you awake?

One of these voices is real, one is in my head.

Everything's getting sharper, as real and as harsh as steel wool. I'm leaving one world and arriving in another. But am I waking up, or falling asleep?

Doctor Erist told me later that after seeing the sun, I lapsed into some kind of fit. I remember hearing the EKG speed up even more and Nurse Nguyen running back in to hold me down as Erist gave me a sedative shot. I was saying ‘The light, the light', over and over. Erist said not to worry, that patients were often startled after finding out how long they'd been asleep. She always called it ‘sleeping', as though I'd just dozed off and spent five years dreaming.

But it wasn't the time that had alarmed me. She was obviously lying about that – this couldn't be the year 2012. What had frightened me was the daylight. Where was the fog? The ugly grey-brown cloud that had permanently stained the air I'd been breathing my entire life – where had it gone?

I'd been awake again for about an hour when someone new showed up – a dark-skinned woman who wore a lab coat instead of scrubs.

‘Hi Tom,' she said. ‘How are you feeling?'

I was thinking more clearly now. I didn't know who these people were, or what they were trying to do to me, so I said nothing.

‘I'm the head of medicine here,' the woman said, apparently undeterred. ‘So if you need anything, let me know, and I'll make it happen, okay? We have quite a library downstairs if you want something sent up for you to read, and they have DVDs too – there's a player hooked up to the TV. Dr Erist tells me that you won't be able to handle solid food for a little while, but when you're ready, the cafeteria spring rolls are really good.'

Erist spoke up from the corner, where she was fiddling with my IV drip. ‘Can I help you, Doctor O'Connell?'

‘Well,' the head doctor said, ‘there are some reporters downstairs –'

‘Absolutely not,' Erist said.

‘– and I wondered if Tom would mind answering some questions.'

‘That's not happening.'

‘It's not up to you.' O'Connell looked at me. ‘How do you feel about it, Tom?'

‘I'm his doctor,' Erist said. ‘It's my call.'

‘It's not a medical decision, so it's
his
call. Unless, of course, you want to declare him mentally unfit.'

Erist hesitated.

‘I'm not talking to anyone,' I said.

‘No problem,' O'Connell said with an understanding smile. ‘But tell me when you change your mind. It's very rare for someone to wake up after being in a coma as –'

‘Minimally conscious state,' Erist corrected.

‘– as long as you have,' O'Connell finished. ‘The press will be very interested in what you have to say.'

She bowed slightly as she walked out.

Erist sighed. ‘Sorry about that. She thinks the hospital could use some good publicity. And it could – but not at the expense of its patients. I don't think it's a good idea for you to talk to anyone until you've remembered more.'

It didn't feel like I was going to remember more – just the opposite. Recollections of my past were disappearing. One minute I could picture Kyntak, and then I'd become uncertain about the shape of his nose or chin, and then finally I'd be left with nothing but the name. My life was slipping away.

Erist's beeper went off. She looked down at it and swore. ‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I have to deal with another patient. Call the nurse if you need anything, okay?'

I said nothing. She left.

I hadn't been alone long before some movement drew my gaze. The window to the corridor was covered by a set of half-open venetian blinds, and between them I could see a pair of eyes.

As soon as I connected with them, they disappeared. Whoever it was had stepped away from the window.

Another captive, like me? I had to find out. Now, while I was alone, might be a good time to try to escape. Perhaps this person could help.

I attempted to shed the blanket and climb out of bed. But the sheets were incredibly heavy. They seemed to be woven from solid iron. I'd lifted cars that were lighter than this.

They're not heavy, I realised. I'm weak.

Maybe the doctors weren't lying about the time. Maybe I had been lying here, muscles atrophying, for half a decade.

I'd dragged the blanket halfway off when someone appeared in the doorway. I recognised her eyes from the window. She was forty-something with short, crow-black hair. Her expression was hopeful, yet frightened – like she thought it was dangerous to be happy.

‘Tom?' she said.

‘Who are you?' I asked.

She recoiled as though I'd hit her. ‘I . . . they told me you didn't remember anything, but I thought . . . I hoped . . .' Tears began to tumble from her eyes.

‘I'm not Tom,' I said.

She crossed the room and squeezed my hand. ‘Yes you are,' she said. ‘And I'm your mum.'

My mum? I looked up at her.

‘Get out,' I said.

Her eyes widened. ‘Tom? I –'

‘I'm not Tom. Get out.'

‘I sewed your Dracula cape for Halloween,' she choked. ‘I took you to see
V for Vendetta
, right before the accident. Don't you know me?'

That was the problem – I did. I needed to get away from those eyes that looked so much like my own, that hair which was exactly the same shade of almost-black. I could remember the cape she was talking about. This woman was proof that my whole life had been a dream, and I needed to escape from her.