Doomware (20 page)

Bracing himself against the windscreen, he pulled his left arm with all his might, trying to slip it free of the wire. It was a bad move, motivated purely by desperation, and all he succeeded in doing was pulling the wire even tighter. The pain was excruciating. His teeth chattered together as he thought: I am going to die. The idea of death itself he could cope with; what was death if not sleep without the dreams? It was painless. Timeless. He was certain of that much. It was painless, timeless
nothingness
. But the thought of being tortured to it, by the man who’d made his life a misery: that was a nightmare come true.

The boy called something to him and he looked up towards the flat.

“Shawn, listen to me, okay?” he shouted up to him. “I want you to get the big carving knife, the serrated one, from the kitchen and bring it to me, okay? Hurry!”

The boy disappeared into the flat. There was no other option now. He was Varley’s pain-feeling prize, not the boy.

What felt like an eternity later the boy came dashing through the rain, the knife in his hand. David took the knife and placed it on the roof of the car as the boy climbed onto the bonnet. He wrapped his free arm around him and pulled him close.

“Thank you,” he said breathlessly, their faces pressed together. “You’re a good boy, a brave boy.”

Shawn’s expression was a picture of anguish. “You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” he asked tearfully.

“I don’t know,” he said, incapable of lying when the situation was obviously so dire. “I really don’t know … but I’ve got a shot now thanks to you.”

“Please don’t die.”

Tears spilled from the corners of David’s eyes, disguised by the rain. “Listen to me: did you see where the holdall went?”

Shawn sniffed. “He took it.”

“Okay … I want you to listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say, okay?”

The boy nodded and David stroked his cheek.

“I want you to go back inside and–”

“I’m not leaving you!” the boy sobbed.

“
Quiet!
Go back inside and go to sleep. Tell your brainware not to wake you before morning, not for anything, okay? Okay?”

Reluctantly, the boy nodded.

“You
must
do this; this is very important. Promise me,” he ordered, shaking the boy a little for emphasis. “
Promise
.”

“I promise.”

“Good boy,” he said, and he kissed him on his forehead. “That’s a good boy. Now go – hurry. No wait! Take this.” He pulled Shawn’s father’s ring from his trapped hand and offered it to the boy in a cupped palm.

Shawn wouldn’t take it. “No! You have to keep it.”

David felt dreadful, as if he were throwing the gift back in the boy’s face. “Take it! Go on. Just for safekeeping. C’mon. Do as I say.”

Shawn took the ring, but with so much sorrow in his eyes it was almost intolerable to look upon. “I’ll give it back to you later,” he said forlornly.

“Yes, you do that. Now go. Back to flat and go to sleep – go on.”

He released the boy and gently pushed him away – the hardest, most heart-rending thing he’d ever had to do. He did it with head turned, eyes lowered and jaw set.

When he looked up the boy was running away from him through the rain and he almost lost it, almost called him back so he could look upon his face one last time, so he could tell him something loving he would always remember. He had to fight to control himself. Racked with fear and guilt, shivering and breathless, destroyed by the notion that he’d never see the boy again, it was almost a full minute before he was able to turn his attention to the wire. During this time the street lights came on, adding to his panic.

Sawing through the plastic coating the wire was easy but, as he’d feared, the wire itself resisted the knife’s blade. He kept trying, concentrating on one spot, fighting against the effects of his shivering. After ten minutes he’d barely carved a tiny notch in the wire, and freeing himself would require cutting it in numerous places. It was hopeless; there was nowhere near enough time. Darkness was closing in on him and the rain was slackening off. He struck at the wire with the hilt of the knife several times and let out a roar of pure frustration. An echoing sound from somewhere in the darkening city, like a response to his cry, made him freeze, looking around with the eyes of a wild man. Roaring in frustration had been yet another stupid thing he’d done to add to the ever-lengthening list. Night was falling, the rain was stopping, and he was advertising his presence to a city full of flesh-eating zombies.

He looked at the knife and, without really thinking about it, moved it from the wire to his arm. He didn’t know the first thing about amputation. Where did you cut: mid-bone or at the joint? What did you use for a tourniquet? Surely he’d pass out before he ever cut through? He was certain those people stranded in the desert hadn’t had to deal with pain; they must have been aided by brainware every step of the way. He had no such advantage and besides, if he did somehow manage it, would he survive such brutal self-administered surgery without proper medical attention? He returned to sawing the wire, knowing that his best shot was using the knife on Varley himself. Maybe driving it point-first up through the floor of his mouth would stand a chance, even though it was a long shot. The blade would have to penetrate quite some distance before it reached brain tissue, and on a body as meaty as Varley’s it would be no mean feat.

The rain was no more than a few lingering spots when he looked up and saw a zombie appear from a side street. The figure was far too slight to be Varley, but he recognised it immediately: Everard. Quickly, he hunkered down, pressing himself against the windscreen, but he sensed it was too late. It had already seen him. Oh Christ, he thought as he changed grip on the knife so he could use it as a dagger. Just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.

Everard attacked with the same cow-eyed deliberation he’d witnessed countless times before. It grabbed at his legs, trying to pull his trousers down, its engorged member straining to get to him. David let loose with the knife, jabbing it into its shoulder, an action that produced no response whatsoever. Shit! He wasn’t thinking clearly; he should be holding the knife the other way round, so he could push it up through the floor of its mouth. The knife came out with a horrid sucking sound. There was no chance of changing grip on it now. He’d have to go for the eyes, but before he could do so Everard leapt onto the bonnet. The closeness of its swollen organ outraged him and he yelled at the zombie, trying to kick it in the balls. He couldn’t land a kick hard enough, and in the attempt Everard, more by accident than design, knocked the knife out of his hand. It bounced with a metallic clang on the car’s roof and went spinning away – quickly out of reach and out of sight.

“
Nooooo!
” David cried.

Everard’s hands, together with his stink, were all over him. It was trying to turn him over and remove his clothing at the same time. He felt the outlandish, desperate futility of his situation. He was alone, defenceless, his movements restricted by the wire and the cold and fear that were draining his muscles, no match for whatever force it was inside Everard that refused to die. Just placing his hand on its face and pushing at it weakly felt like it took a monumental effort. It would be easier just to let the thing have what it wanted. No sooner had he thought this than Everard seemed to lift up and take flight like some vampiric apparition. He caught a glimpse of him sailing backwards through the air before the image of Varley, who had picked him up and tossed him like a rag doll, demanded his full attention. For once in his life he had a reason to be glad to see Varley, but it was a fleeting thing; he knew only too well that evil had just been replaced by a greater evil. He cursed his luck. It was all over. He’d lost the knife, his only chance of survival. Varley had won. Then he had a crazy idea: what if Varley didn’t mean to torture him after all? What if his intention was to be good to him, to apologise, to somehow make up for all the misery he’d put him through in life?

Varley wrapped an arm around his free arm, linking them at the elbow, positioning itself so that it was in complete control. Slowly, the creature began bending his fingers back. What a crazy idea indeed. He was powerless to resist, and showed defiance the only way he could: by not crying out in pain. Mostly it was bloody-mindedness, but he wouldn’t let Varley have the satisfaction of getting what it wanted. His fingers bent further and further, causing skin to stretch and bone to grind against bone. His teeth clenched together, still he refused to cry out. Then it reached the point where it seemed his bones must surely break, the pain shot into a hitherto unexplored region, and a long, anger-filled scream erupted involuntarily from between his teeth.

Varley turned its filth-covered head in his direction and said, “
Does - it - huuurrt?
”

“
Fuck you, you bastard!
” he spat, with such vehemence it seemed to quash the pain.

Then he realised Varley had let go of his fingers. Keeping his arm pinned back, it tore his shirt open and sank its teeth into his chest. He roared in pain and horror. It quickly turned its attention back to his arm, twisting it at the elbow. This time he called out long before the pain became unbearable. Varley stopped twisting, and he felt a moment’s triumph. Everything might be stacked against him, but he could still outwit the bastard. But it wasn’t long before Varley got wise to the ploy, pushing further and further until it got the genuine cry of pain.

The torture went on with neither pause nor mitigation until his head lolled and he lost all concept of time, Varley assaulting different parts of his body with anatomical precision, its strength indefatigable. Dimly, he was aware of the other zombies that surrounded him like a circle of spectators. They flitted at the edge of his senses like the memory of a dream shortly after waking, their insensible cries and ghoulish faces adding to the horror of it all. He was where he’d always dreaded being ever since the virus had struck: out there, in the night, an enforced trespasser amongst them, the unwilling central star of a
Grand Guignol
show for the undead. There must have been some kind of hierarchy to them, since all of them seemed to know not to mess with Varley. Only once did a zombie stray too close, which Varley disposed of with a single bone-crunching backhand.

He came to a new understanding of pain. He’d thought he’d always known what it was, better than anyone, but he was wrong. Pain was not a headache or a hangover or an accidental cut; it was the worst thing in all of creation. He was experiencing True Pain. Unbearable pain. And it was the master of all. It superseded God and the Devil and morality. It superseded hopes and fears and decency. It superseded everything – even reality itself. Nothing else mattered when you were in the grip of True Pain. Nothing at all.

The notion he’d had of not giving Varley what he wanted by refusing to cry out seemed so ludicrous now he couldn’t believe he’d ever deluded himself with it. He howled over and over, completely unable to stop himself.

There was one major zone of vulnerability on his body that was so far unmolested: his crotch. What Varley did to him down there made him squirm and shake and catch screams in his throat, rattling against the car’s bonnet as if he were being electrocuted. Blood filled his mouth. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t pass out. His senses phased back and forth, switching between alertness and stupefaction as he was forcibly see-sawed between pain and True Pain. Through it all he was quite certain he hadn’t lost consciousness since recovering from that first punch. Varley was adept at keeping his subject conscious, all so the screaming and the howling and the sating of its sadistic desires could continue. Even so, Varley’s gradual increasing of the pressure and intensity of its torture methods meant it could only be a matter of time before bones broke and organs ruptured. Surely then he would pass out?

He prayed for an end to the pain and the degradation as a kaleidoscope of thoughts and images flashed into his mind – his brain’s attempt at providing some kind of comfort in such dire circumstances. Mostly they were memories of his family, or of Shawn. He could only hope the boy had done as he’d told him to, and wasn’t watching all of this. Dear Shawn. Poor dear beautiful Shawn. How terribly he had failed the boy. He would probably wake to find him still attached to the car, his desecrated – and no doubt half-eaten – carcass symbolic of a promise of fatherhood unfulfilled. It was the child who would bear witness to them tearing the flesh from his bones, and dully he wondered if he’d still be alive whenever Varley finally finished with him, when the many vulturine zombies encircling the car would be free to take their first bites.

He teetered on the edge of unconsciousness, willing himself into it, exhausted by his own repeated screaming and the protests of his body. But still unconsciousness refused to come, and when he looked up next Varley was holding the carving knife Shawn had brought to him. Shivering from head to toe, he realised it was far from over; they hadn’t even gotten to the torture with implements stage yet. Did Varley plan on cutting off parts of his anatomy? Did it plan to pull out teeth and fingernails? Was the creature versed in the abhorrent torture techniques of long ago, back when everybody had felt pain? He wanted to cry, to weep for himself and the boy and the world, but he was too tired and pain-stricken. When Varley drew the blade across his forearm he grinned a maniacal grin. He couldn’t feel it.
I can’t feel it, you bastard!
he felt like crying out in victory. But then his pain receptors caught up with the blade’s track and the cut burned like fire. He screamed as Varley carved a second notch in line with the first, going half insane with pain and despair.

Never had he wished he was cybernetic so badly – to be able to turn off the pain, to turn off the agony of this indecent state of consciousness. Looking up into the blankness of the black sky, he gasped the words “help me” over and over between screams. He was of no significance to his experiment-loving God, an entity who certainly would not intervene on his behalf, yet still he called upon him in supplication. What were a few more unanswered prayers to add to the scattered billions that had gone before? How much longer could it go on? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything any more. All he knew for certain was that unconsciousness had to come to him at some point.
It had to
.