Decay Inevitable (34 page)

“If we were in real-time,” Will posited, “this train might actually take about a thousand years to get here.”

“Don’t,” Joanna admonished. “That’s just too bloody cheery.”

He asked her about Harry and her job. She was studying to become a barrister. Harry worked in the City, part of the pinstripes and braces brigade. “But he’s all right, believe it or not. He makes lots of money, but he’s not a wanker.”

“It feels funny, doesn’t it,” said Will, “talking about this kind of stuff while we’re standing here, waiting for a train? Especially when we’re not waiting for a train. We’re lying on crisp white sheets in a hospital somewhere, while the machine that goes
bing!
goes
bing!
by our beds.”

Joanna nodded. “It’s grim, when you think of it, that everybody in a coma thinks about a place like this. Our minds come up with this. Of all things.”

“Yeah,” said Will. “Imagine what we’ve got lined up when we die. It won’t be
The Magic Roundabout
, that’s for certain.”

There was the sound of a whistle, splitting the cold, foggy air. In the distance, smoke billowed into the sky. A minute later, the snout of a steam train rounded a curve in the land and bore down on the platform, pistons shunting the train forwards, the sound of the engine chuntering happily. The engine was created from bones. Skulls adorned the buffers; ribs that could have only come from a whale bent around the wheel arches.

“Nice touch,” Joanna said, as the train drew alongside. A becapped figure leaned out onto the footplate and beckoned them to hurry aboard. The point of an iron had been driven into his eye; the rest of it stuck out, the flex dangling as though he were a robot with his innards unravelling.

Will and Joanna found themselves alone in the carriage. The seats were beautifully patterned with gold thread, the wall space ornamented with sketches of steam trains in full flight. The train gathered pace, forging a path through the busy sprawl, nosing into a countryside filled with mountains and veldt and vast lakes that bubbled and geysered what might have been tar, what Will
hoped
was tar, many metres into the sky.

They bought tickets from an inspector in an immaculate black uniform who, like Will, sported a gunshot wound. His, though, was located under his jaw. It had made an exit wound through his nose, turning that part of his face into an extraordinary melange of pink tissue and black, burnt meat.

“I’b god a dreadful aib,” he said, apologetically. “I could neber eben pid draight, neber bind blow by own head off.”

A haughty voice came to them, crackling over the tannoy, to direct their attention to some piece of local interest or another. Somebody else came by with food for them. A woman asked if they needed their shoes cleaned.

Somehow, Will fell asleep, a weird sleep within sleep, in which he dreamed of his real life, his animated life. In it, he was sitting with Elisabeth and Cat and they were enjoying lunch together on a sunny patio. There was wine and cheese and fresh bread and fruit. He kept wanting to turn around to look at the lawn that was behind them because he could hear something approaching, but Cat kept stopping him.

“You don’t want to see, I promise you. It’s best you don’t see.”

Elisabeth would back her up, craning her neck to look at whatever was coming towards them. She’d pull a face and nod. “I’m with Catriona on this,” she’d say. “It’s probably best all round if you just sit tight. Maybe, if you’re quiet, it will go away.”

Joanna woke him from this uneasy snooze. He found he had been crying.

“How long have we been on this train?” he asked her, in an attempt to deflect her curiosity.

“You’ve been asleep for an hour or so. Whatever an hour means here.”

The crisp, authoritative voice burst out of the tannoy soon after, as if invited by Will’s impatience.

“We shall shortly be arriving at Mash This,” it said. “Please ensure that you take all your belongings with you. Have your tickets ready for inspection and leave no blood or body parts behind. Enjoy Mash This and be sure to travel with us again soon.”

Will collared the inspector as the train drew alongside the platform. Three children in swimming costumes were waiting to climb on board, shepherded by a lifeguard in mirrorshades with a shark bite the size of a dinner plate in his abdomen.

“What’s in Mash This?” Will asked.

“Whad idn’t, sir? Bash Thid id the playboy cabidal of our liddle world here. Ib you can’t bind a good tibe here, you bight as well be dead.”

They presented their tickets at the booth and were waved through onto the station concourse. Grunge music was being played at ear-splitting volume from speakers set into the ground that were as regular as cats’ eyes.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t think I had anything specific in mind,” Will said. “But take your pick. I think we’ll find it here.”

A taxi pulled up alongside them. A yellow cab that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the streets of New York, if the driver had been able to do something about the bubbled and blistered appearance of his skin. “Blowtorch,” he said, conversationally as they piled into the back seat. His eyes followed them in the rear-view mirror. They were large and vivid, almost obscenely big, like orbs of white icing on a sticky treacle cake. “Hurts like nothing you would believe, until the nerve-endings get fried off. Wife had it arranged. Hitman with an imagination. Not what you want, really. But the last laugh’s with me. I lied when I said I’d leave her everything. She’s in the hospital now. Tears streaming down her bloody face. ‘Pull through, Freddy,’ she’s whining. ‘Attaboy. You can do it!’ I tell you, it will be a tragedy if I come out of this. I’m having a fantastic time. But listen to me blabbing on. Where can I take you?”

“I could do with a drink,” Will said. “Know any good bars?”

“Do I know any bars? If people had nicknames around here, mine’d be Freddy ‘Bar-knower’ Fisk. Sit back and enjoy the ride. I hope you remember it after a night out at the place I’m going to take you to.”

The ride was like something out of a nightmare. The road was a trampled approximation of flatness, comprised of ancient speakers and strobe lights. Music was everywhere; rock competing with opera, acid jazz trying to subdue hip hop, reggae jousting with bhangra, all of it at volumes designed to make the ears retch.

Walking wounded shuffled along pavements or sat in recesses away from the throng nodding their heads to the variable beats. Great palaces of litter had risen from the sides of the road and faced each other across the traffic, a death’s door Vegas. Edged with flashing lights, they begged and bossed passers-by to come and watch dancing girls, and lose their money at the gaming tables. Other, less obvious attractions jostled for attention: gladiatorial bouts; suicide pits where failed souls could watch how-to videos by people who had checked out properly; mutilation chic clinics where those embarrassed by their wounds could glitz them up into this season’s must-haves.

Freddy dropped them off opposite a bar with a neon sign depicting a man drinking endlessly from an unlabelled bottle of hootch, his eyes turned into plus signs. The bar was called Cunted? You Will Be.

“I could come and pick you up later. Literally!” Freddy offered.

Sex alleys away from the main drag were rotting rat-runs filled with booths where the depraved could let loose the desires that convention and legality had forced to be hidden in life. Any permutation of animal and human was available, whether it moved around on the hoof, paw, webbed foot, or flipper. An old man whose mouth was a blood bath filled with dental equipment was standing on the doorstep of one of these cess-pools, stroking his chin while a bouncer challenged him to come up with something new that he couldn’t show him inside.

Gargling slightly, the dentist’s victim said: “Shaved cat used as a dildo on a superfat woman while a black guy, who’s being sucked off by a birthing goat, slams her tits repeatedly in the passenger door of a Peugeot 206.”

“I’ll get back to you on that one,” the bouncer said.

“Christ,” Will said. “Let’s get a drink.”

Inside Cunted? barstaff were trying to clear up the aftermath of a small war. Tables and chairs had been overturned. People were hitting each other with the abandon that comes with the knowledge that it won’t make a single bit of difference. Will and Joanna found a place at the bar; a bartender slid a couple of cocktail menus their way.

“I’ll have an Eggy Chin,” Will said, picking a drink at random.

Joanna said, “Piss on Your Chips.” The bartender went about magicking the drinks from the bevvy of shakers and bottles beneath his bar.

The entertainment, as far as Will could discern any beyond the brawl that was gradually being brought to an end, consisted of topless dancers on a stage going through a number of tired routines. Weary of the constant music, Will studied their injuries, which seemed to be fairly tame, apart from in the case of one lithe blonde who was gamely trying to dance with the branch of a tree rammed through her chest.

“Have you seen any more people like the ones you left behind at Gloat Market?” Joanna asked.

“Not yet, and I hope I don’t. That was too creepy. It was like looking at a series of really old photographs of your family and seeing your own eyes replicated in a person from each one.”

Jolted into remembering what he had seen in the mirror after his experiences with George and Alice, Will fingered his lower arm and his shoulder. Both areas felt sore and much too soft for his liking. Their drinks came. Will’s was some kind of hellish nog and spirits brew, while Joanna’s looked as if it had been drawn from a dodgy tap in the toilets.

Will excused himself and made for the gents, promising to come back quickly. He slalomed around the dregs of the fight, easily dodging punches thrown by the bloodied sacks staggering into each other, and pushed his way through a door bearing a medical diagram of a cross-section of the male generative organs. Bodies were piled up in the urinals, sleeping off the violence and the vodka. In the single cubicle, slumped on the seat, a man was trying to have sex with a woman who was fading from this place. Will watched, horrified, as he saw how it happened. How it would be for Joanna if her husband carried through his promise. The man didn’t seem to notice as he thuggishly, drunkenly lunged his hips into an area that was greying out, failing, rippling to nothing in his hands. Will caught a glimpse of skeleton, little more than a dim X-ray suggestion, and then the man was alone, reality slowly dawning on a face made imbecilic with booze.

Will averted his eyes, remembering what he had come here for. He unbuttoned his shirt and gingerly tugged back the two halves, almost swooning when he saw the spread of decay. His flesh resembled bacon that had been retrieved from the back of a fridge many, many days after it should have been consumed. It glittered and flashed iridescently. The patch on his shoulder had reached over to his chest and was consuming the pectoral on the left side. His right arm was completely infected, to a point just above his wrist. But for all that, he felt fine. As fine as it was possible to be, in the middle of a fever dream shared by all the poor bastards who were walking the tightrope between life and death.

The woman from the cubicle lodged in his thoughts. How her face had aged and crumbled as she fled towards death. The rictus of her mouth leered behind Will’s eyes. This was how Cat had gone. And the others, no doubt. He remembered his grandfather dying. It had been a dignified death, the doctors had said, something Will’s father had repeated whenever the subject came up. A dignified death. Did any such thing exist? After witnessing this, Will doubted it. Death was a down and dirty affair. You could wear a freshly pressed suit and your nicest tie as you prepared for the end, but your bowels didn’t give a fig for that when it came. A death during sleep, in a comfortable bed with the family holding hands around you, was the best way, he had thought. But someone would have to wipe the sputum from your face as the death rattle took hold of you. Someone would have to take the shitty sheets and burn them after you were carried out in a box or a bag. Death wasn’t dignified. Ever. It wore a joker’s costume and slipped a whoopee cushion under your backside as you relaxed into it. It shoved an exploding cigar in your mouth as you struggled for those memorable last words.

Will washed his face as best he could with the foul water in the basins and dried himself on the sleeves of his shirt. The light in here wasn’t the best kind, hardly flattering, but he knew he would never be able to look at himself again without being able to see that grinning loon pressed against the flesh, trying to break free. The harlequin, the skull beneath the skin.

“H
AVE ONE OF
these,” Joanna said, reeling against him as he fought his way back to the bar. “They’re really very good.”

Will sipped some of her cocktail and ordered a fresh one from the bartender.

“He must be wondering how he got the raw deal when it came to coma existence,” Joanna whispered, drunkenly. “I asked him his name. ‘Emperor Hirohito’, he says. I like that. I like that you can be whoever you want to be here. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be Ava Gardner, I think.”

A congenial buzz was spreading around the cavernous bar. People were righting seats and using them to sit on for a change. The glazed dancers scurried off the stage as a big band blare stormed from the speakers. A small man with oiled hair came onto the stage holding a wireless microphone with a huge blue muffler at the end, his red, velvet suit garnering a chorus of wolf whistles from the audience. Through squeals of feedback, his voice came at them in crescendos of sleaze. Will found himself wiping his palms on his jeans for the duration.

“Laze ’n’ gennermal. Thanoo, thanoo verr mudge. I’ve been Brad Pitt and you’ve been a wunnerful aujence. Abzlootlwunnerful.” The mic never left his lips. He strutted prissily around the stage, peering into the audience like a long-sighted passenger trying to read the number on a bus. “We’ve got a big, big treat for all you lovely, lovely folks now. All the way from wherever you want her to be, the delectable, the adorable, the you’ll wanna take her home in your pocketable, the one, the only, SiiiiiiiGOUrrrrrney WEAverrrrrrrrr!”