Road of the Dead (18 page)

Cole shivers. The fields of white grass are beginning to stir.

“He meant what he said, you know,” Jess says quietly.

“Who?”

“My uncle. If you need any help—”

“Why would you want to help me?” Cole says suddenly. “What have I ever done for you?”

“It’s not a question of
debt
,” Jess says. “We’re not saying we
owe
you anything. We’re just offering to help.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Are you going after Red for killing your dog? Is that it?”

Her voice goes cold. “That one’s had it coming for a long time. Killing Tripe was just the last straw. Red was always going to get it before we left, dog or no dog.”

Cole looks at her. “You’re leaving?”

She nods. “Tomorrow.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere…anywhere…” She shrugs again. “As long as it’s away from here, I don’t really care.”

“Don’t you like it here?”

“What’s to like?”

Cole nods his head. “I did wonder…”

“What?”

“Nothing…it’s none of my business.”

“You wondered what we were doing here?”

“Well, yeah…” He looks around at the emptiness. “I mean, it hasn’t got much to offer, has it?”

Jess smiles at him. “No work, nowhere to sell anything. No fairs. It’s not even much of a site.”

Cole stares at her, his mouth half-open.

Jess laughs quietly. “To tell you the truth, I really don’t know what we’re doing here. It was Uncle’s idea. He saw this place in a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah, he gets them sometimes—dreams of journeys, dreams of places. He doesn’t know what they mean, but he thinks they mean something.”

“And do they?”

“Who knows?” She shrugs. “They probably mean as much as anything else.”

Cole shakes his head. “And you actually
follow
these dreams? You go to places that your uncle
dreams
about?”

“Sometimes—if we’re bored, or if we don’t have
anything better to do. It doesn’t happen often, but if there’s no work around, or if we don’t need any work…” Her voice trails off and she gazes around at the surrounding moor. “I know it’s not much of a place,” she says, “but it makes a change from living in the gutters of a shit-hole town that looks and smells like every other shit-hole you’ve ever been to.”

Cole nods again. “The people are just the same, though.”

“People are always the same.”

They sit in silence for a while: Cole looking around, breathing the air, thinking about dreams and possibilities; Jess gazing sadly at Finn. He’s lying in the grass at her feet now—his head on the ground, his soft brown eyes fixed on nothing. Jess wants to comfort him, but she knows it isn’t possible—you can’t comfort those who don’t understand. She sighs heavily and looks up at the sun. It’s sinking rapidly behind the closing clouds, filling the sky with a smoldering black light that turns the world to ashes.

“Do you think Ruben’s all right?” Jess says quietly to Cole.

“He’d better be.”

She looks at him. “What are you going to do?”

“Find him.”

“How?”

“He’s my brother…I’ll find him.”

“But what about Quentin? He’s not bluffing, Cole. If
you stay here and go looking for Ruben, Quentin will kill him.”

“So I’ll leave.”

“But you just said—”

“I’ll find him.”

“You can’t do both.”

Cole looks at her. “He’s my brother, Jess. I can do anything.”

I
was tired now. My head was pounding. I was hungry and thirsty and cold. Black lights were flashing behind my eyes, and the numbing agony in my arms had spread up into my shoulders, across my neck, down into my chest, making me whimper like a wounded animal. My backside ached from sitting on the hard wooden floor, and the bloated pain in my bladder had gotten so bad I’d had to let go and pee in my pants.

I didn’t know what I was doing.

As the light faded to a senseless dusk, I let myself drift away again.

It’s raining when he comes out of the trailer, a fine cold rain that colors the air with a dimming silvery black. Faces and forms are indistinct. He’s wearing a dark coat, a hat, a backpack on his back. His right hand is bandaged. He
moves cautiously, painfully, his head bowed down against the rain. As he leaves the trailer he half-raises his hand and nods his head to someone inside, then he shuts the door and pulls up his collar and shuffles away across the rainsodden campsite.

I can feel the reddened clay clinging to the soles of his shoes.

The cold mist of rain.

The smell of damp cloth.

He keeps his head down, his eyes fixed to the ground. He walks with the weight of surrender on his mind. Along the rutted track, past the trunks of stunted trees, ghosting through the rain toward the village road. An unseen figure in a parked car watches him. He doesn’t have to see the car to know it’s there—edged in behind a storm-blackened oak at the side of the road, some way down the hill—he knows it’s there.

He pauses at the end of the track, shrugs his shoulders, adjusts the bag on his back, then turns to his left and begins trudging up the hill.

The rain is falling harder now, dragging the black clouds down to the ground. The moor is melting into the storm-black sky, becoming one great mass of darkness. Granite, stone, earth, time. Thorn trees, flesh, dust, and bones. Everything is black.

He keeps moving, climbing the hill. Past the gas station, where another figure in another parked car watches
him slowly, then flicks a switch and grunts a few words into the crackle of a CB radio. Someone, somewhere else, says
Copy that
, and the radio goes quiet.

He’s soaked now, soaked to the bone. His feet wet inside his shoes. He continues up the hill, uncaring of the things around him: the drystone walls, the stricken trees, the jutting tors on the distant hills…

I can smell the memories of ponies, their horse-sweet breath in the air. I can smell dark earth and wood smoke and gorse, and I can see what I saw once before: stone walls encrusted with lichen scabs, little white fingers dipped in blood. Devil’s Matchsticks.

He’s stopped.

We’ve reached the bus stop.

And I’m mesmerized again by the unholy silence of the moor. No human noises.

No traffic. No voices.

The silence of another age.

Another time.

Another bus stop. Another day. Another night.

Nothing changes.

The sky is always black with rain. Rachel is always getting off the bus, trying her cell, hurrying across to the telephone box, trying to call Abbie. The phone is always out of order. Broken, busted, jammed. No signal. No answer.
Rachel is always alone. It’s always cold and it’s always wet and it’s always dark and windy, and there’s always something out there, something that shouldn’t be there…

Don’t think about it.

He’s standing beside me, his hand on my shoulder.

I can’t help it
, I tell him.

I know.

He gives my shoulder a squeeze, then looks over at Rachel. She’s waiting for us at the side of the road.

What are you doing here, Rach? I thought you were dead.

She looks at the figure beside me—the lowered head, the dark coat, the hat.
Is that really Cole?

Sometimes,
I tell her.
Other times I’m not so sure. His face keeps shifting. Sometimes I think he’s an
anti
-Cole.

He looks at me.

I shrug.

Headlights appear in the gloom, the rattle and judder of an approaching bus. He holds out his hand. The bus pulls up, the doors open. He gets on, pays the driver, walks down the aisle, sits at the back. The only other passenger is a lank-haired man in a long waxed coat, pretending to read a newspaper.

I watch the bus as it clunks into gear and pulls away with a tired groan, and I can see the faceless figure with the bandaged hand in the rain-swept window at the back, but I can’t feel anything from him. He’s just a shade, a shadow, an anti-brother…going home…

And now he’s gone, and all I can see are the rain-blurred stars of the bus’s rear lights, fading dimly into the senseless dark.

“Wake up,” the voice said.

I felt something nudge my foot, and for a moment I thought the rat had come back again. I couldn’t understand why he was telling me to wake up.

“Hey, shit-head,” the voice said. “Wake
up
.”

I felt someone kicking me, and now I knew it wasn’t the rat. Rats don’t kick.

They don’t talk, either. Rats have twinkling eyes and twitching noses and yellow teeth. Rats are quite content to leave me sleeping.

“Maybe he’s dead,” another voice said.

“He’d better not be. Quentin’d kill us. Kick him again.”

I really felt it this time, a full-blooded boot in the thigh, but I was too numb and tired to react. All I could do was open my eyes and stare at the boot—a scuffed old Timberland with worn leather laces—then slowly look up to see who it belonged to. Careless eyes looked back at me, a pinched face, sour and hard…I didn’t know who it was. It was just a man. A boy. A humanimal thing.

“You alive?” He grinned.

His streaky blond hair was gelled into a fashionable mess that didn’t seem to belong to him. It looked like
someone else’s hair. A small silver crucifix hung from his ear. His lip was pierced with a tarnished gold stud.

“Nice,” I mumbled.

He jerked his head at me like a curious chicken. “You
what
?”

His breath was sweet with marijuana.

“What’d you say?” he hissed at me.

I couldn’t speak, I just looked at him. A thin string of spit bubbled in a gap in his teeth. I knew he was going to kick me again, but I didn’t really care. I was too tired to care. I lowered my head and waited for the blunt crack of his boot, but then the other voice spoke up again.

“Leave it, Sim—just get his hands.”

“Uh?”

“His hands…just do what Henry said.”

I lifted my head again and saw Vince standing at my feet with a bottle of water and a scrunched-up plastic bag in his hands. His hair was moist with rain, shining greasily in the broken light, and his skin was pale and tight. He didn’t look very comfortable. His eyes were troubled with the fear you feel when you know you’ve gone too far. He wanted out, but he knew it was too late for that now. He was in too deep.

“Enjoying yourself?” I heard myself say to him.

He stared at me for a moment, then turned to Sim. “Come on,” he said, “let’s just do it and get out of here.”

I heard a sharp metallic snap, then Sim was stooping
down beside me with a bone-handled switchblade balanced in his hand. An instinctive breath of emptiness caught in my throat, but before I had time to think about it, Sim had ducked around behind me and was cutting through the ties on my hands. He wasn’t too careful about it, and even though my arms were numb I could still feel the blade nicking and slicing my skin. But that was nothing compared to the pain I felt when he finally cut through the ties and my hands were suddenly freed and the blood started flowing again. That was almost unbearable—my shoulders ripping apart, my flesh burning up, my skin stripped raw with a thousand burning needles.

As the tears streamed down my face, Vince stepped forward and placed the bottle of water on the floor beside me.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, great.”

He nodded at the bottle. “Have a drink.”

“Where’s Cole?” I said.

Instead of answering me, he opened up the plastic bag and pulled out a couple of slices of dry white bread and a small chunk of cheese.

“Here,” he said, offering me the food.

When I didn’t move to take it from him, he dropped it on the floor and looked at his watch.

“You’ve got five minutes,” he said. “Eat it now or go hungry. It’s up to you.”

“Where’s Cole?” I asked him again. “When are you going to—?”

“Five minutes,” he repeated, then he turned his back on me and walked away to the other side of the barn.

Sim followed him.

I didn’t move for a while, I just watched them. They sat down on a bale of straw. They lit cigarettes. They talked quietly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. They didn’t seem to be watching me, though, and for a fleeting moment I thought about making a run for it.

I looked over at the hatchway. It was propped open with a wooden pole. No more than ten meters away from me. I glanced over at Vince and Sim. They were still talking, still smoking. I wondered if I could get to the hatchway before they spotted me. They were closer to it than me…but maybe if I surprised them…maybe if I moved really fast…maybe if I…

Maybe nothing.

It was pointless. I couldn’t move fast. I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t even get to my feet.

I reached for the water bottle and took a long slow drink, then I put the bottle down and started ripping into the sliced bread and cheese. It was wonderful—the freedom, the water, the taste of the food. The bread was dry and the cheese was stale, and all of it was humiliatingly hard to swallow…but it was still wonderful.

I was just swallowing the last mouthful of bread and washing it down with another long drink when Vince and Sim came back. Sim was chewing gum, pulling a strip of blue plastic from his pocket, whipping it against his leg
to straighten it. Plastic handcuffs. I could already feel them cutting into my wrists.

“You done?” Vince asked me.

“Looks like it,” I said. “What’s for afters? You got any cake?”

Vince nodded at Sim. Sim got out his knife and moved around behind me.

“Give him your hands,” Vince told me.

“How much longer—?”

“Just put your hands behind your back.”

I looked at him, wondering if there was anything I could say, anything to persuade him to help me…but then Sim grabbed my hands and yanked my arms back around the wooden post, and the burning pain shot through me again, making me feel sick, and I couldn’t think of anything. I felt the cuffs cutting into my wrists, then Sim pulled them tight and locked them off, and I was right back where I’d started from—absolutely nowhere.

Vince was picking up the empty bottle now, getting ready to go, and I could feel Sim standing up behind me, folding his switchblade away, and I knew that in a moment I’d be on my own again—hurting, aching, shaking, crying—and it was all I could do to stop myself from crying now. I
wanted
to cry. I wanted to break down in tears and beg for mercy. I wanted to
plead
with them to let me go…

And I don’t know why I didn’t.

But I didn’t.

After they’d gone, I felt a little ashamed of myself for a while. I knew I shouldn’t. I hadn’t done anything shameful. I hadn’t done anything wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Nothing wrong with wanting to cry, wanting to beg, wanting to plead. There’s nothing wrong with anything. I just didn’t like the idea of my faith in Cole being shaken, that was all. I knew there was nothing wrong with that, either, but I still couldn’t help feeling bad about it.

And I didn’t want to feel bad.

Never feel guilty about anything
, my dad once told me.
Shame and guilt are a waste of time. Just do what you do—and deal with it.

So that’s what I did.

I dealt with it.

Then I closed my eyes and released myself and drifted back to the moor.

It’s early evening now. The rain has stopped but the sky is still heavy and dark. Although the sun won’t go down for at least another hour or so, there’s already a feeling of night to the air—the hills are slumbering, the rooks are starting to roost, the colors of the moor are fading to a cold and shapeless gray. And as I drift down over the village, I see no lights, no people, no movement. The hotel is shut. The houses are dark. The streets are empty and still. Even the river is quiet, its bronze-black waters gliding in silence beneath the old stone bridge. I drift on, following the rise
of the hill, riding the rain-scented air over fields of grayed grass and granite, and in the distance I can see the lights of the gypsy camp. A faint blue glow in the half-light, a shimmering crescent of warmth. The trailers are haloed in the dusk. I can see pale lights burning behind curtained windows, vent pipes misting, blue flames dying in the embers of a fire. The camp is shrouded in its own sapphire night.

Moving closer, I can feel things beginning to stir. Inside the trailers, shadows are moving behind the curtains. Dogs are unsettled—whining, pacing. A pony snickers and stomps. It’s a quiet stirring—intermittent. A door opens. Voices murmur. The door shuts. A man in a greased coat and boots comes out carrying something wrapped in an oil-stained cloth. He crosses the yard, gets into a Shogun, lays the cloth on the passenger seat, quietly drives away—along the rutted track, then left, up the hill.

Some time later, another door opens and more voices murmur. This time two younger men come out, both carrying small canvas bags on their shoulders. The bags look heavy. The two men drive away in a white BMW—along the rutted track, then right, down the hill.

This goes on for a while—people leaving, driving away—until eventually there’s only one car left: a red Mercedes.

The gas fire is still burning in the Delaneys’ trailer. The windows are fogged. Reason is sitting at a foldout table,
smoking one of his cheap cigars and sipping from a tumbler of brandy and port. His face is flushed with the mix of heat and alcohol. A sawed-off shotgun lies on the table in front of him.

“I ain’t saying you
can’t
go,” he says to Jess, who’s over at the sink filling a glass of water. “I’m just saying…”