The Terminus (15 page)

“What did they
do to you? Did Teeth touch you up? Harm you?”

But Beetie
stared blankly at him.

“Who
are
you?”
she asked after few moments. “Why were you in my head all the time in the
Hatcheries?”

“I… I’m Gary.
Like you told the woman.
Don’t you remember a thing?
The Retreat?
Where we shared a cell? Arthry… the
double-crossing bastard… and your brother, Blinker? Can’t you recall cutting my
hair? Mike and I call it a Beetie-cut.”

The girl’s
strained expression informed Gary
she was trying so hard to bring back whatever had been wiped from her brain.
Maybe some of their time together was still inside that pretty head... the
kiss, perhaps?

“Did you
really remember my name?” Gary
asked.

“The Chairman
told me. I couldn’t get your face and voice out of my mind… not even after all
the things they kept doing.”

She looked
away.

“They? Doing
what?”

“The warden...
mostly.”

“Warden? A
man?”

“No. A woman.
A fiend.”

“What
did
they do to you, Beetie? Tell me everything you remember.
Who
is the
Chairman? Is it Teeth? Did he… oh shit, I dunno how to say this… did he
do
anything to you? Like touch you where he shouldn’t? Where
no
one should?
Not without you consenting… if you… I mean… oh, shit!”

Mike… how
would you ask her? I need your help here!

“The grey
building… it was so awful!” The girl clearly wanted to avoid any discussion
about what the Chairman might have done.

“I’ve been in
the grey building, Beetie. I know what goes on there…
will
go on… but
dunno
why
.”

Gary
thought of Mike. How he prayed his friend would be able to pull out all the
stops and survive. He’d never forgive himself if he ended up on one of those
slabs.

“What happened
to your memory?” Gary asked. Beetie
shrugged her shoulders.

“They said I’d
have to go back to the grey building if I didn’t behave… didn’t get you out of
my mind. But I couldn’t. And I was so certain you would come for me. Why, I’ve
no idea… but you’ve still not told me
who
you really are.”

Gary
gave her hand a gentle squeeze as they walked on. This she allowed, but any
attempt to get closer and she withdrew. He so fervently wanted to hold her in
his arms and kiss her again but feared she’d scream and run away. Boy, he vowed
he’d
kill the bastards who had erased her memory, who’d made her so
afraid, who’d perhaps even… No, he couldn’t bear to think of such a thing!
Right now he needed to get her home, come clean with his mum and not let the
girl out of his sight for one second. The Agenda had Mike’s time-specs, and
possibly spies in present day London.
Any moment one or more might appear out of thin air to whisk the girl away for
whatever evil purpose they’d planned for her. He knew rescuing Beetie would be
the beginning, not the end, of their story.

“I’m Gary
O’Driscoll,” he explained. “Using time-specs, I came to you in
my
future… to help you and others in the Retreat solve the mystery of the
Terminus. To stop The Agenda destroying what’s left of a submerged London
and of human civilisation.
You
told me all of this, Beetie.
With the others there.
Your fellow
Retreaters.
But the place is full of traitors. Like Arthry, the great
slob. You trusted him so much. He’s your boss, damn it!”

“Arthry?” the
girl queried. “Yeah, the Chairman told me about Arthry. His friend, he said.”

“Did he
mention Blinker?” Beetie slowly shook her head. “Or God?”

“He
is
God.
But I‘m to call him the Chairman.”

A third
God… or Teeth?

“Little man,
big teeth?” queried Gary.

She said
nothing.

“Who gave you
those weird clothes?”

“Weird?”
Beetie halted, frowning. “The Chairman’s clothes are
beautiful
!” she
insisted
.
“Including the underclothes… and the
flowers… and all those other things he promised me at the Terminus. I saw them
on the computer screen. They’re lovely! He recites poetry to me, as well.”

Poetry?
Underclothes? The Terminus?

Under
different circumstances he’d have gone forwards in time to kill the man whoever
he was but Gary kept his cool and
they walked on.

“Handsome is
he? The Chairman?”

“He’s like…”
The boy feared the pause meant a search for words to describe some Hollywood
superhero lookalike. “…like the worst thing you can imagine. Worse even than
what went on in the grey block. His head… his teeth and…” Beetie paused.
“His
eyes
.
They’re…”

“Evil?”

Beetie glanced
sideways at Gary, her own eyes
unbelievably lovely.
No
one would destroy their beauty whilst he was
still alive!

“
Evil
?”
she repeated. “Maybe. Evil… yes! You being in my head fought off the evil.”

Must’ve
done something right!
Gary
smiled to himself.

“Yeah!” he
said, feeling oddly shy.

They entered
the station. Gary bought two
tickets and took Beetie down to the platform.

“Have I been
here before?” she asked, still holding Gary’s
hand, childlike, as the train slowed towards the platform. She seemed anxious.
“Outside the Retreat... I seem to remember something…” she began.

“Similar,” Gary
said, “only the train of the future’s called a ‘shuttle-bus’.
A sort of silver pod and a bloody sight faster.
In fact I’ve
no idea how they go so fast... though I’d love to find out. At a guess,
something
like
magnetic levitation. No friction, see.”

Beetie’s
smile, the first since her rescue, gave Gary
comfort. They boarded the train.

“I think I
remember you’re very clever,” she suddenly announced. “Are you?”

Gary
blushed.

“Maths,
science, I find easy. But words… well, Mike’s the
words
guy. Not me.”

“You’re
very
clever!” she repeated, squeezing his hand. “I know!”

He remembered her
squeezing like that in the future. It had been their secret means of
communication.

Is the
shadow that fogs her memory lifting?

Puzzled
glances from other passengers accompanied them from Stanmore to Swiss Cottage.
Whether because of Beetie’s extraordinary beauty, her eyes, her smeared face,
her cocktail party dress, her bare feet, or his camp-looking tracksuit, the boy
could not decide, but the attention worried him. Trying to ignore the stares,
Gary listened to the girl as she began to talk about things she did remember…
the warden, whom she hated, the garden which she loved, the clothes gifted by
the Chairman (to Gary’s embarrassment Beetie excitedly extolled the finery of
silky underwear without the slightest inhibition)… and what she’d seen on the computer
in her room. He didn’t dare ask her again, on the train, what else had
happened, or whether Teeth had visited her in person. Should his worst fear be
confirmed, no way would he have been able to control his temper.

“Gary,
the Terminus
must
be beautiful. Will you take me one day?
All those mountains, waterfalls… and the flowers.
Oh, you
simply have to take me there. I want to share these things with you. If it
wasn’t for the Chairman’s preparatory lesson, I’d have…”

Beetie stopped
abruptly when Gary’s eyes flashed
anger, his jaw hanging open.

“
What
lesson? Where? What the heck did he do to you? Tell me!” A row of eyes turned
on the girl but Beetie didn’t reply. “Beetie, what
happened
? I won’t
harm you. It wasn’t your fault... but I have to find out!”

“He did
nothing. Only…”

Tears appeared
again at the corners of her eyes. Gary
realised he’d gone too far.

“You’ll have
your flowers, Beetie. Here in the past. Lots of them. We’ll go to Regent’s Park
together. Mum’ll get you proper clothes… shoes… and…”

“High-up
shoes? The Chairman gets me such
lovely
high-up shoes.”

“High-heeled!
Not practical, Beetie. Trainers are better. Mum’ll help you. You’ll like her.”

“Who’s Mum?”

Gary
had a flashback to when he first met Beetie, Beefor and Arthry and they
reckoned ‘mums’ were a kind of flower.

“My mother.
The person I came out of. We have no Hatcheries
here. Nothing like the grey building, either. Not a bad place, present day London.
I promise you.”

“
Bad
place?”
echoed Beetie. Unbeknown to Gary,
her mind was starting to release darkly-hidden images of a future undersea
world.

They emerged
at Swiss Cottage, holding hands, and walked slowly on down the hill, away from
the

“
Not
a
bad place… like you said, Gary!”
She grinned at the boy.

“No,” he
agreed, his mind elsewhere.

The truth?
Mum has to be told everything! She’s scatty, has no interest in technology or anything
remotely scientific, but she’s kind and she’s strong. She must be told
everything about Beetie.

They arrived
at his home… a safe haven where Beetie might gradually forget the horror of all
she’d been through and adapt to the present.

“Let me do all
the explaining,” Gary insisted
after ringing the doorbell.

The door
opened.

“Mum…” he
began.

“So
you’re
Belinda!” exclaimed Gary’s mum. “He
told us you’re pretty, but… oh, by golly, you
are
lovely!”

Mike flexed his knees and blinked
a few times. He smiled at the oaf standing in front of him.

“Hi, Mr
Universe! Take me to your leader, as they say… huh?”

The man
grabbed Mike by the arm and, without a word, dragged him across the wide
courtyard towards Teeth, the warden and a group of barefoot girls in pretty
dresses sitting quietly on benches in front of the wall. Behind Teeth was a
door in the wall. Mike assumed this led to the Terminus. The ugly little fellow
came forwards, but not, as Mike rightly guessed, to greet him with the courtesy
due to such a distinguished visitor from the past as himself. Like the man’s
head, his hands were disproportionately large. He reached up – he was at least
a foot shorter than Mike, a youth of average height – and gripped him firmly by
the throat. Mike grunted through the constriction, but not once did he take his
eyes off the man’s.

“Where’s he
taken her?” Teeth asked, finally relaxing his grip.

“Nice to meet
you, too,” Mike replied, rubbing his neck.

“
Where
is she?”

“I do like
your girls. Still think Veronica’s got nicer legs, though. You should see…
URGH!” Teeth had Mike by the throat again.

“I’m not
renowned for my patience!” Mike heard voices behind him. “The others are here
already. We can’t wait any longer. Tell me where Gary
lives!
In
your
London
!”

“I thought
they were both dead, Chairman. Honest I did,” said a vaguely familiar voice.

Teeth let his
hand drop.

“Didn’t do a
very good job, did you?” he responded.

“Cor... think
I’ll do without the neck massage next time, but thanks all the same!” remarked
Mike, before turning his head to find out whom Teeth had been addressing. He
recognised Blinker by the nervous tic, and the large black guy was the traitor
Gary had called ‘Arthry’.

“So many
gee-rats I assumed they didn’t stand a chance,” Blinker said. “Can’t
understand. Unless…” Blinker seemed to search his mind for an excuse to explain
Mike’s continued presence on Earth. “He’s a funny smell.” He nodded in Mike’s
direction. “Put ’em off, maybe?”

“Well,
you
can
finish the job in the grey building yourself when we discover where his silly
little friend, Gary, has taken Belinda.”

“Gary’s
not so little. In fact, compared to you he’s quite…” blurted Mike.

“SHUT UP!”
snapped Teeth swivelling and fixing him again with those hideous eyes. “Either
you tell me now, or we suck the information out of you.” He indicated the grey
block.

“Erm… the
‘now’ sounds better, if you don’t mind. Swiss Cottage, in fact. Funny, ay? Not
really Swiss, and certainly not a cottage. More of a pub, actually. Got any
here? Pubs?
Lot
of ’em closing down in the past, of course.
The recession!
People can’t afford to get pissed. Man, I’d love a drink myself after all that
neck massage.”

“I know where
he lives!” a deep voice boomed out. It was Arthry.

“
You
know?”
enquired Teeth, eyeing Arthry with suspicion. “How come?”

“Lives in a
pub, right, Mr Big Guy? The Swiss Cottage!”

They ignored
Mike.

“Gary
told Belinda when they were in the Retreat. She gave me the address. Said this
meant nothing to her,” explained Arthry.

“Won’t be his
proper
address, you dumb dudes!” Mike butted in. “In my London
we
always
give fake addresses. Got blokes called ‘burglars’ who come and
nick all your stuff, so you never give away your real address. I mean, you
wouldn’t, would you? Be like, well…”

“
I’ll
get her, Chairman,” continued Arthry as if Mike was now invisible. “She still
trusts me. Everything else is ready. No point in delaying now. I’ll use his
specs. Here... give them to me.”

Arthry held
out a large hand.

“Wait!” said
Teeth.

The ugly
little man reached up and adjusted something on Mike’s time-specs. The boy’s
hopes of quickly returning to the twenty-first century vanished when Teeth
snatched the specs off his face.

“You lot still
here?” said Mike. “Bugger!”

“Get what you
can from his pea-brain then finish him off slowly. Dismantle him bit by bit…
whilst he’s alive!”

“Sounds better
than another neck massage,” joked Mike praying Blinker had been truthful in the
tunnel.

Arthry
disappeared in a flash. Blinker grabbed Mike by the arm and headed towards the
grey building with him.

“AND
IF ARTHRY DOESN’T BRING HER BACK BY THE TIME
HE’S
BEEN TURNED INTO
GEE-RAT FOOD I’LL FINISH YOU OFF PERSONALLY,
BLINKER!” Teeth yelled after them.

“Your leader
has an attitude problem,” whispered Mike. “Needs a bit of counselling, I
reckon!” When they were well out of ear-shot of Teeth, and Blinker had relaxed
his grip on Mike, he added: “Why the hell did Beetie give the big guy Gary’s
address?”

“Dunno,”
replied Blinker. “Tried warning her about Arthry, but she wouldn’t listen.
She’d turned herself against me. It was the Chairman…”

“Teeth,
please!”

Blinker
laughed.

“Teeth? Yeah,
suits him. He’d programmed Beetie to dislike me for obvious reasons... but Gary?
Something happened to her with Gary.
She couldn’t stop talking about him.”

“You’re
telling me! Same the other way round. Nothing but Beetie this and Beetie that.
Bored the pants off me, he did. Oh shit, if only I hadn’t let him down by
getting frozen by that fat bastard with a mag-stunner. Gary’s
a good bloke. Best friends always are.”

“So long as
everyone thinks I’m still with them we have a chance, Mike. Mind if I call you
Mike?”

“Use whatever
name you like. Just don’t chop me up into giblets for the daddy-rats!”

“The Chairman
has given me an idea.”

“Not too keen
on his ideas.”

“No… this
might give us all a bit of time.”

“All?”

“See those
surfacers there?”

“Pork chops on
legs?”

“They’re
people
.
Same as us. Made that way with what The Agenda gives them. For a purpose. Something
the real God’s trying to put a stop to though it seems like he’s finally lost
the battle. Anyway… I’ve got a little idea.”

“From Teeth?
The Chairman creature?”

“
Because
of Teeth. Now… how’s your stomach?”

Blinker opened
the door to the grey building. The stench, a thousand times worse than the
stink of gee-rats, hit Mike like a bucketful of stale meat and entrails being
flung in his face.

“I haven’t got
a stomach, I swear,” whispered Mike. “Only a nose and it’s having a bloody
awful time. God, this is almost as bad as a blast of Teeth’s breath.”

“Quiet!”
cautioned Blinker. “Those big men in there are subordinate to me. Think I’m
with The Agenda, but would turn on me in the blink of an eye if one smelt a
rat.”

“Huh! They’ll
do that all right!”

The heavies
were busy herding bloated gee-rats towards the swing doors, prodding the
creatures’ behinds with machetes, making them turn and snarl through chattering
teeth.

“The Chairman
wants me to personally deal with this one!” Blinker called out. A particularly
large heavy looked up at the boys.

God, what a
revolting-looking bloke
, thought Mike.
A perennial arsehole!

He liked the
word ‘
perennial
’. Connected the past with the future and he vowed to one
day test it out on Gary. He was
forever trying out new words on his friend.

“WHY?” the man
shouted back.

“Ask the boss
yourself,” replied Blinker. “But if he thinks you’re wasting his time he’ll get
me to deal with you as well. I’m warning you… he’s in a foul mood.”

The man
shrugged his shoulders.

“There...
behind you!” He pointed to a blood-stained ceramic slab beside which stood a
crate crammed full of body parts.

“Can’t you
find a clean one?” whispered Mike.

“Shut up!”

“Funny… Gary’s
always saying the same thing!”

Mike climbed
up onto the slab and lay back in a pool of half-congealed blood.

“Guess I’ll
need to change my clothes now before asking Veronica to the flicks,” he said.

Blinker placed
a silver helmet over the top of his head. For a moment he doubted Blinker,
wondering whether all hidden thoughts, including censored ones concerning
Veronica, were about to be sucked from his mind. Focussing on memories of her
legs somehow soothed his fear.

“Good to see
those rats are nicely fattened up,” Blinker said to the back of the heavy now
coaxing the gee-rats out of the hall. “Gonna need plenty of food in The
Terminus today… so you’d better start salting rat meat.”

The doors
closed behind the heavy. Mike raised his head from the slab.

“You eat those
bloody things?”

Blinker pushed
him back down.

“I honestly
will
switch this thing on if you don’t stay quiet!”

“Okay! Keep
your funny hair on!”

“Hurry,” said
Blinker, removing the helmet from Mike’s head. “We’ve hardly any time!”

“Man, I
thought, for a moment you were gonna transfer my brain to another planet.”

“Stop prattling,
Mike! Fetch a couple of big knives.”

Mike jumped
down from the slab.

“Those machete
things on the wall?” He pointed to rack of a large broad-bladed knives.

“Get on with
it!”

Mike took down
a couple of machetes and twirled them above his head like a Chinese sword
dancer before handing one to Blinker.

“You start at
the far end,” instructed Blinker, indicating the end where surfacers still
squirmed whilst liana tubes connecting their heads to the silver pipes gyrated
and jiggled. “Cut the black tubes first… afterwards we’ll go for the big one up
on the ceiling. Should slow things down the other side of the wall.”

He referred to
the large silver pipe that connected the grey building with the Terminus. Mike
ran between the rows, slashing away on both sides. Each severed tube swung
loose making a sucking sound like a vacuum hose before going limp. Some of the
freed surfacers sat up, removed helmets, rubbed their heads and surveyed the
scene. Others, too far gone, twitched aimlessly and waved feeble limbs still
attached to bodies.

“Life-Force!”
Blinker informed Mike after they’d met up again in the middle of the hall.
“I’ll explain later, but this is why God and the Chairman fell out. Hey... you
lot!” he added, addressing the doll-eyed live surfacers. “Kill the big men when
they return. Use
the knives hanging on that wall. Feed the bastards to
the gee-rats!”

“So where’s
that ruddy great thing lead to?” Mike asked when Blinker got up onto a slab and
began hacking at the silver tube.

“The Terminus.
Why?”

“Well… the
Terminus is where we wanna go, mate. Seems wide enough to me.”

Blinker
stopped hacking.

“You must be
mad. Get sucked along with the Life-Force?”

“Anyway,
you’ll never cut into that with these things,” observed Mike. “We should make a
rope from all those old tracksuits.”

“A
rope
?”
Blinker looked puzzled.

“Like you
said. No time to waste!”

Blinker raised
his eyebrows, grimaced and followed Mike to the other end of the hall. Within
minutes they’d tied strips of discarded tracksuit material into a long length
of tough rope which Mike tested between both hands.

“Seems strong
enough. How many of those zombies are still upright? A hundred or so?” Blinker
grinned.

“Mike, you’re
brilliant!”

“Funny, I keep
telling myself the same thing. Veronica too… when I get the chance. ‘You’re in
the presence of a true genius!’ I said to her. Get those guys lined up,
Blinker, and I’ll thread the end of the rope round the pipe where it’s
attached.”

Soon, over a
hundred surfacers were pulling at both ends of the tracksuit rope looped round
the silver tube.

“ONE…
TWO… THREE… HEAVE!” shouted Mike, waving his machete about as if conducting an
orchestra of ghouls. “ONE… TWO… THREE …
HEAVE!”

The tube
groaned under the strain before snapping free from the ceiling, buckling.

“PULL! PULL! PULL!”
urged Mike.

The downward
curvature of the pipe bowed until, with a hollow bang, a crack opened up.

Alarmed by the
noise, three heavies appeared through the swing doors, their forearms caked in dried
blood. The surfacers had the benefit of surprise. The large men stood gaping,
machetes dangling. In an instant twenty surfacers were onto them flailing their
own weapons. Several got injured, but by dint of numbers they soon over-powered
and hacked down the heavies. Some began slicing off the dead men’s arms.

Mike,
sickened, averted his gaze.

“God, you lot
are badly in need of proper civilisation! One bunch here’s as bad as the next!
Come on guys… PULL! PULL! PULL!” he commanded.

The crack in
the tube yawned wide before splitting apart with a metallic rip, the nearer end
falling onto a slab and crushing a half-dead surfacer. A ‘whoosh’ like a
reverse belch disappeared up the end that led to the Terminus. Mike looked from
the fragmented pipe to Blinker. The other boy’s face gave away nothing.

“Where
else
can we escape to?” Mike asked. “We’ll be outnumbered when Arthry and the others
show up ’cos Teeth’ll be wondering what on earth you’re doing. Seems you
wouldn’t last as long as a flea on a monkey’s backside when he discovers you’ve
double-crossed him. Particularly if he doesn’t get Beetie back… and I’m telling
you, Gary ain’t gonna let her go
again. He never gives in. Me neither. Could be why we remain good friends even
when we’re pissed off with each other.
And another thing!”
He grinned and winked at Blinker. “Once or twice in my life I’ve actually been
serious!”