David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (23 page)

The noise shattered the silence, piercing the walls of the building and cracking across the fields outside. Wood splintered above me as bullets passed through the door. A shower of plaster rained down into my hair and face.

I kicked the door closed. It slammed shut, rattling in its frame. Sarah glanced at me, then at the door, trying to work out if she could get there before I got to her. But she didn’t move for it. Instead, she turned, her hands up again, backing away. I raised the gun and pointed it at her, then darted across the room, grabbed her by the arm and brought her into me.

‘Myzwik!’ I shouted through the door.

Nothing. No noise from outside.

‘I’ve got her and I’ll k–’

A mobile phone started ringing on the other side of the door. It was Myzwik’s. Slowly, the door handle started turning. I squeezed Sarah in closer to me, one arm locked around her neck, the other out over her shoulder, aiming the gun at the door.

It opened.

Myzwik stood with his gun down by his side and his mobile phone at his ear. His eyes were pale, almost the colour of his skin, and he was growing a beard – jet black – which gave him an odd, alien appearance. A face cut through with light and dark. He didn’t take his eyes off me, even as his mobile phone started up again.

He answered it.

Myzwik nodded at the voice. ‘Yes, he has her.’

‘Put the phone down,’ I said.

He didn’t. The voice continued, a constant barrage of instructions.

‘Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Put the phone
down
.’

This time I spat the words at him with venom, and in Myzwik’s face I saw a flitter of surprise. As if he hadn’t expected it, even from a man determined enough to come right into their nest.

Finally, the voice stopped.

Myzwik flipped the phone shut.

‘What do you want, David?’

‘I want to know what the fuck’s going on here.’

‘Why?’

‘No. You’ve had your turn asking questions. Now it’s my turn.’

‘Turn? We don’t take turns.’

‘Wrong. You’ll answer my questions – and you know

Myzwik glanced at Sarah for the first time, and then back at me. Something was up. A movement in his eyes betrayed him. For a moment, I swore I saw some sadness in his face.

Then he shot Sarah in the chest.

The bullet entered high up, just above her left breast. She jerked back, her blood spitting into my face, and then fell away. In an automatic response, I tried to prevent her hitting the floor, tried to yank her back up towards me, but she folded completely. The transfer of weight was too much and too fast for me to cling on to. I laid her down. When I looked up, Myzwik was almost on top of me, his gun aimed at my head.

‘
What the fuck are you doing?
’

‘Get up,’ he said.

I glanced at Sarah. She was at my feet, clutching her chest, blood pumping out between her fingers. In her eyes some of the light had already disappeared.

‘She’s going to die.’

‘Get to your feet or you’re next.’

I stood. Sarah’s eyes followed mine, but then she seemed to lose focus and her gaze drifted off. I wiped some of her blood from my face.

‘She’ll die here, Stephen,’ I said, trying to reason with him, using his first name as a way to get at his humanity.

But it didn’t work.

I looked down at her. Her life – maybe only twenty years of it – was running out over her hands, down her shirt and into the floorboards. Collecting with all the other blood that had been spilled in this room.

We headed down the track, towards the second building. It was an old slate farmhouse with an extension on the back. At the front was a veranda, like the one in the Polaroid of Alex, and a wooden sign, nailed to the inside of the railings. It said
LAZARUS
. Beyond, grass dropped away to the sea, heather scattered across it, spreading in all directions. Either side, more fields ran like squares on a quilt. A few had been dug up. Spades, pickaxes and garden forks had been left on the hard ground.

A hush settled across the farm as we approached. The only sound came from a set of wind chimes, swinging gently in the breeze coming off the water, and, at the side of the house, the grinding sound of metal against metal as a weathervane turned in the wind. As the wind died down, I looked up to the top of the roof and saw what the weathervane was: an angel.

I stepped up on to the veranda and looked in through the front window. Alex had been in there once to have his picture taken. Frozen for a moment in time. Framed by the window, the wooden railings of the veranda and the blue of the sea and sky. The picture must have been taken right back at the start,

Myzwik pushed me along the veranda.

‘Open the door and go inside,’ he said.

I tried the door. Like Bethany, Lazarus opened into a kitchen. It was small, dark, with all three windows covered in black plastic sheeting. Two doors led from the kitchen. One was closed. The other was open, and I could see into a stark living room with a table in the centre and a single chair pushed underneath. On the walls of the kitchen were picture frames and shelves full of food. Above the cooker was a newspaper cutting.
BOY, 10, FOUND FLOATING IN THE THAMES
.

The same one I’d seen in the flat in Brixton.

Myzwik flicked the lights on and closed the door. He grabbed my shoulder, pressed his gun into my spine and sat me in a chair at the kitchen table. Behind me I heard him open and close a drawer. The tear of duct tape. He started to wrap it around my chest and legs, securing me to the chair. When he was finished, he threw the duct tape on to the table and stood in front of me. Looked down at me. Touched a finger to one of the bruises on my face. As I jolted away from him, avoiding him, he grabbed my face and moved in.

‘You’re going to
die
,’ he whispered.

I wriggled free from his grip and stared at him. He held my gaze for a moment, then turned away, removing his mobile phone. He flipped it open and speed-dialled a number.

‘Yeah, it’s me. He’s here.’

He looked at me. ‘You’re not here to hurt people, David, is that right? You’re here to – what? –
liberate
?’

I didn’t reply.

He shook his head. ‘You believed you were doing something good. On some kind of crusade. But all you were doing was pissing in the wind.’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘Do I?’

‘If I was pissing in the wind, two of your friends wouldn’t have driven me to the middle of a forest to execute me.’

His eyes narrowed. Then he moved around to the other side of the table and his expression changed. Softened. I realized why: he could say what he wanted now, because when I left the farm, it would be in a body bag.

‘I don’t think we ever really clicked, Alex and I. A lot of us here tried to help him, but you’ve got to meet in the middle. He didn’t want to do that.’

‘So, where is he?’

Myzwik shrugged. ‘Not here.’

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

‘I’m sure his mother painted a beautiful picture for you. But Alex is a killer. He made mistakes.’ He glanced at the newspaper cutting on the wall, and back at me. ‘When he had nowhere else to turn, we were there for him. Just like we’ve been there for everybody else in this place.’

I turned away from him. Said nothing.

‘What does that look mean?’

He leaned towards me.

‘
Huh?
’

‘You don’t care about anyone.’

‘We do.’

‘By giving them more drugs?’

‘
Yes
.’

‘By taking out their
teeth
?’

He shoved the table towards me. It juddered against the lino, sticking. Rocking back and forth.

‘Don’t sit there and judge what you don’t understand!’ he screamed. ‘You don’t know the programme, you piece of shit! We give them a
chance
!’

I didn’t reply.

He came around the table, teeth gritted, hand reaching for my hair. I turned in the chair and ducked beneath his grasp – but the binds stopped me from moving any further. He clamped a hand around my throat and pushed me back so I was looking up at him. He was out of breath. Rage boiling. But as we stared at each other his eyes narrowed again, and he saw everything clearly. He saw I’d got to him.

He let go of me.

‘You’re clever, David.’

‘If I was clever, I would have put a bullet in your head before you murdered a teenaged girl in cold blood.’

‘You mean Sarah?’ He shook his head. ‘
You
murdered her by turning up here.’

‘I didn’t pull the trigger.’

‘There’s a cause greater than her,’ he said.

‘She was one of your own.’

‘She was your bargaining chip. You’d use her against us until you got what you wanted. Without her, you had nothing.’

I stared at him. ‘So, you just do what your boss says?’

‘What?’

‘Whoever phoned you before you killed Sarah. He just gives you the orders and you do what he tells you. Even if it means killing an innocent girl?’

He didn’t reply.

‘Don’t you value life?’

He shot a look at me. ‘I value it greatly,’ he said. ‘I value it more than you can possibly imagine.’

He leaned over and removed a wallet from the pocket of his trousers. Inside the wallet was a driver’s licence. He held it up to me. There was a photograph of him on it.

‘I’m sure you’ve already read about me. I served ten years for stabbing an old man with a piece of glass. You know why?’

‘You were a drug addict.’

‘Right. I needed saving. That’s what redemption is. Digging up a bad seed and planting a good one in its place.’

‘And you’ve redeemed yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not so different, David,’ he said, smiling. ‘You’re also a killer.’

Click
.

A noise from behind me. The door opening. Myzwik looked over my shoulder. Suddenly, his expression changed completely: everything fell away, all control.

He was scared.

In front of me, in one of the picture frames, I saw a reflection. A shape standing close to my shoulder. A silhouette. I couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t see whether he was looking at me, or looking at Myzwik. But I could smell something.

A smell like decay.

I glanced at Myzwik. His eyes flicked between me and the man behind me, and then he edged away slightly, clearing his throat, as if he couldn’t stand the smell. He slid away, along the kitchen counter, back towards the corner of the room.

When I looked at the picture frame again, I saw why.

In the reflection was Legion, his mask half-hidden in darkness, a needle in his hands. And before I had a chance to do anything, he came at me and plunged the needle into my neck.

Everything went black.

When I came round, I was sitting in the middle of a disused industrial fridge. There were no windows, and it was lit by the dull glow from a single strip light above me. Meat hooks hung from a long metal tube to my left. There were two doors, both of them closed: one seemed to be the entrance, dotted brown and orange with rust; the second was some sort of side door, painted the same cream colour as the walls. Speckles of blood ran across its surface.

I was sitting in an old wooden chair, but they hadn’t tied me to it. My shoeless feet were flat to the floor, exactly parallel to one another, my arms flat to the sides of the seat. My fingers had been spread out, equally spaced, and my wedding ring had been removed and placed on the top of my hand. They’d taken off my shirt and trousers. All I had on were my boxer shorts.

And I couldn’t move.

My head could turn from side to side – but the rest of me was paralysed. I couldn’t shift a single muscle. Couldn’t even wriggle a finger. I knew what I wanted to do,
begged
my body to do it, but nothing happened. I was dead from the neck down.

I yelled out. A huge, guttural noise, fed by anger,

The noise died again.

‘
What have you done to me?
’

Nothing. The only sound was the dripping.

I swallowed.

Inside I could feel everything. The saliva sliding down my throat. The pounding of my heart against my ribs. A sharp, acidic burn, like fire in my lungs. The freezer was cold but I could feel a bead of sweat pop from a pore on my forehead and run down my face. Past my eyes, my nose, my mouth and down towards my neck. As soon as it passed the middle of my throat, the sensation disappeared. On the surface of my skin, from the neck down, there was no feeling at all. I was dead. It was like my organs and muscles were no longer connected to my blood vessels and nerves.

Clunk
.

The entrance door started opening. A slow, grinding rumble as it forced its way out from the door frame. A man filled the doorway. Not Legion. Another. He was massive: probably six foot four and eighteen stone. His blond hair was closely cropped, and he was dressed head to toe in black. He watched me for a moment. Tilted his head slightly. Seemed vaguely amused by what he was seeing. And then he stepped forward and brought his arms out from behind his back. There was something in his hands. At first I thought it was a belt. Then I realized it was something

‘What the hell have you done to me?’

The man didn’t reply. Just stepped further inside the freezer and pushed the door shut behind him. It made another immense wheeze. He walked over to the side door next to the meat hooks and opened it. Beyond, it was dark. He looked back at me once, and disappeared inside.

‘
What the hell have you done to me?
’ I shouted after him.

Silence.

I looked down at myself again, tried desperately to move my fingers, my hands, my legs. All I got in return was the
sensation
of it happening. My wedding ring remained perched on top of my hand. Perfectly still.

The man stepped back out of the darkness. He was still carrying the scourge, but in his other hand he held a chair. He walked over to me, placed the seat down opposite, so our feet were almost touching, and sat and watched me.

‘My name is Andrew,’ he said eventually.

‘What have you done to me?’