The Unblemished (17 page)

Bo squatted next to him and tried to understand what it was he
had to do.

'What's your name?' he asked.

The other man blinked at him, docilely, bovinely, and said:
'Shand. I think.'

'Shand. What are you doing?'

Shand surveyed the carnage around him as if it were the aftermath
of a child's session with a stack of building blocks.

'I was hungry,' he said. 'I wanted to eat, but I wasn't ... I'm not
strong enough to take what I'm really hungry for.'

'How do you mean?'

'It's been so long. I forgot how. I'm weak. We're all weak. We're
all grubbing. Surviving. Sleeping ... it's made us so weak.'

Bo spread his hands. The dog nearest to him, a German Shepherd
puppy that had been scooped clean as though ready for the
taxidermist's magic, moved its leg suddenly, violently, and was still.
Bo tried not to flinch, was in fact trying supremely not to flee the
corridor, screaming, begging for help.

'Where is everyone?' he asked. 'Where are all the staff?'

Shand seemed unable to comprehend.

'What am I supposed to do?' Bo asked.

Shand blinked at him, suddenly resembling a lost little boy. His
skin, those parts of it that weren't painted with canine blood, was
almost lambently clean and tight, free of wrinkles. His eyes were
clear, no hint of shadows or blood. When Shand talked, the glint of
brilliant, even teeth drew Bo's attention to his mouth. There was
something else about him that gave Bo the creeps, but he couldn't
pinpoint what it was.

'What are
you
supposed to do?' Shand asked. 'What are
WE
supposed to do? You tell us.
YOU TELL US!
'

Bo tried to step back from the sudden tirade, flashing his hands up
to ward off the flecks of dog and saliva being scattered his way. He
skidded on blood, or piss, or faeces, and went down hard on his
backside. He scuttled back, alarmed by Shand's electrifying change of
mood, abruptly afraid that his hunger might not yet be sated and he'd
take a swipe for the soft parts of his own body.

'I don't know,' Bo said, finally. 'I've not been ... taught how to.'
As he said the words, Shand seemed to withdraw all his spikes. He
studied Bo's face as if it had suddenly changed into something new,
something that commanded attention and respect. He wiped away
the blood bracketing his lips, and pushed away the remains of all the
lost puppies who had found a warm home in his gut. He stood up, his
cheap slip-on shoes struggling to gain purchase in the slick of mongrel
effluvia. He nodded, though Bo was no longer saying anything. He
regarded his right hand, which he clenched and relaxed a few times,
as if surprised by the dexterity he could see there. And then he left,
quickly, facing Bo as he backed towards the doors, bowing slightly,
his eyes reverentially averted.

Bo left soon after, eager not to be discovered standing in the
middle of a pack of obliterated animals, but could not see where the
man had gone. A flurry of movement up ahead suggested that
someone was hurrying away on the overland rail tracks, but Bo was
not up for a pursuit. He didn't know what he might say if he caught
up with Shand. He decided that he didn't want to know where he was
going, especially if he was still hungry.

As the sun touched the rooftops, darkening to the colour of melted
butter, Bo made his way back to his bolthole on foot – too wary to
take any form of public transport that might have somebody else's
face inches away from his – and locked himself away with the
forgotten paperbacks, reading until he was distracted enough to be
able to fall asleep. He had heard of books saving lives before, but
never in such fraught circumstances.

In the shimmering seconds before actual sleep received him, he
heard noises on the street that suggested the onset of a dream, or a
nightmare. Awful, carnal, carnivorous sounds. Death in full cry.
Terror's song. Out of those black notes, another map composed itself,
red and unruly, just behind his eyelids. His body clenched involuntarily
as it struck him that somehow he was playing a part, a crucial
part, in that discordant opus.

Dr Edward Houghton had watched a new brass plaque being
fixed to the wall that afternoon, in a rare break between
patients. He still referred to them as patients, though he knew other
private dentists who described them as customers or even cash cows.
His relationship with many of his patients had been eroded by their
suspicion – unfounded, though perfectly understandable – that he
was pulling them in for treatment they didn't need, or providing
fillings that contained a built-in obsolescence, to ensure they would
return. Still, he was busy and doing well.

Now the small waiting room was empty and Lorraine, his
assistant, had gone home. Houghton had spent the last hour
disposing of sharps, cleaning his equipment and updating files on his
work computer. He was looking forward to getting upstairs to a glass
of Talisker malt, a lamb curry, and an hour or two of
Grand Theft
Auto
before logging on to the discussion boards at the BDA website.
The game was a guilty pleasure of his, a habit he had developed after
stillborn experiences of trying to initiate some sort of relationship
with members of the opposite sex. He accepted that he was not the
most attractive man in the world, that his hangdog expression, his
boxer's nose, and his small piggy eyes had had their last chance of
landing a mate. A balding head, expanding waistline, and wrinkles
were only going to work against him. Good teeth were no aphrodisiac
on their own.

He had been favoured with a few pitying stares whenever he
brought up his interest in the game with Lorraine or the patients he
liked enough to have a chat with before or after their check-ups. One
man of around forty had barely been able to suppress a snort of
derision before suggesting he read a book. And yet this very same
man had met his fiancée on the Internet at a chat site. If there were
levels of sadness with regard to computer activity, surely he merited
a rosette, too.

Houghton didn't care. He liked the game, liked how involved he
could get. He could roam the streets freely, off mission, play little subplot
games, drive around, go to the gym, buy a new wardrobe, beat
someone to a pulp, be involved in thrilling police car chases, shoot the
Christ out of things. It was enormous fun.

Frantic knocking at the door gave him pause as he was about to
climb up to the living quarters above his surgery. He went to the
window and looked out into the street. Lauderdale Road was busy
with cars, as was the case every evening at around 6 p.m. London's
rush hour was more like a rush three hours. He couldn't see quite
enough of the entrance to reveal who was standing there, clouting the
door again and again, but the security light cast at least three shadows
across the gravel driveway.

He hurried to the door and placed his ear against it. Worry was
unfolding itself like the slow spiny leaves of a carnivorous plant. He
couldn't understand his discomfort. He often received unheralded
visitors after work, it was a source of pride to him that his was a
house where friends felt they could drop in whenever they wanted,
rather than have to make extensive arrangements, as most Londoners
seemed to do. But something about the anger in these knocks – urgent
without any vocal accompaniment – seemed utterly wrong to him.

Another barrage. He steeled himself and called through the
letterbox: 'What is it? Can't you see the surgery is closed now?'

'An emergency.' A man's voice, young, hurried but smooth.
Someone putting it on.
But even as he thought this, he saw a long,
looping rope of bloody saliva drop down into sight.

'Please help.' Spoken as if recited from a script.

'All right,' he said, and unlocked the door, pulling it open as far as
the security chain allowed. Three men, large men, dressed extravagantly,
all with hair dyed fiery red, shorn almost to the skin, crowded
his doorstep as if desperate to prove they could all fit within its frame.
They wore sunglasses with coloured lenses. Silk handkerchiefs
frothed from top pockets. He thought they were clowns at first, and
then rock stars.

One of them, the tallest, seemed to be holding his face together
with blood-drenched hands.

'Bloody hell!' Houghton barked. 'Get this man to a hospital. My
God. I'll call an ambulance. What were you thinking, bringing him h–'
'No,' the injured man said, stepping forward. He raised a hand
and slammed it against the door, which sprang open, the chain
snapping as if made of spun sugar. The other two men moved swiftly
inside and led Houghton to his surgery. The leader calmly closed the
front door behind him and followed.

'Anybody else in the building?' he asked, the words coming
awkwardly slimed with gore, heavily slurred. Houghton could now
see that there were few, if any, teeth left in the man's mouth. For
someone who had been violently attacked, he seemed admirably calm
about it.

'Yes,' he lied. 'My wife will be down in a moment to help me clear
up.'

'Already clean,' the man said quietly, with difficulty. 'Nobody
else.' It wasn't a question.

He sat in the dentist's chair and put his head back on the rest. He
put his hands down by his sides and a stream of blood drizzled off
them, creating two crimson pools on the brilliant white-tiled floor.

'How can I eat, if I don't have any teeth?' he said.

'What happened?' Houghton asked shakily, trying to understand
his serenity. His pain must be insufferable, yet he didn't show any
signs of being on the drugs that might combat it.

The man lifted his sunglasses; blood made a series of strange
punctuation marks on his face. It was leaking steadily from the corner
of his mouth. 'I walked into a lamp post,' he lisped.

His companions chuckled.

'Right, that's it. I'm calling the police.'

Without looking at him, one of the other men, who was wearing
a laminated photograph of Stanley Kubrick on a chain around his
neck, stepped across his path and closed the door. He stood in front
of it, almost obscuring it, and waited with his eyes politely diverted,
his large soft hands folded primly into each other, like sleeping doves.

Houghton could only stand and wait for something to happen, too
frightened to realise that the others were waiting for the same thing.

'We brought you something to replace my teeth with,' the man on
the chair said. A paperback of
The Human Factor
peeked from his
jacket pocket; his fingers strayed to it frequently, as if it were of some
comfort to him. A series of red fingerprints were arranged across the
top block of pages. The other man who, Houghton noticed with
horror, was holding a piece of brick that was shiny with bloody pulp,
held out his other hand and opened it.

'You must be joking,' Houghton said, looking at the three of them
in turn, his eyes wide with shock, burning with the intense operating
lights that removed every shred of shadow from the surgery.

Graham Greene indicated his nude, seeping jaws. 'Does this
look
like a joke?'

'This is beyond me,' Houghton said. 'What you're asking. It's
beyond me.'

'Breathing will be beyond you,' Greene said, 'if you don't get to
work. Now.'

Houghton took off his jacket. 'It will take time,' he said. 'My first
patients will be here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. This is going
to take ...'

'Begin,' Greene said. 'And I'll have a touch of anaesthetic. I'm not
much of a one for pain.'

Houghton moved in on that riot of wet reds as laughter crashed
around him. For the first time in his career, he wished he'd followed
his father into the waste management industry.

Sometimes, as Manser swam in and out of consciousness, he spoke
to the dead man by his side but was disappointed to get no reply.
He controlled the pain by concentrating on him, asking him what his
likes were. Asking him what kind of soap he used, what toothpaste,
what brand of toilet tissue. That and the sheer force of his will kept
him together.

He was constantly surprised out of his fugues by the simple fact of
this man's death. Manser was lying next to him in a large deserted car
park. It was late, but somewhere nearby there was heavy traffic. The
dead man's eyes were large dark shadows. Assessing them, he
wondered how he could be dead if they were open so wide. But then
another ripple of reality would work through the morphine haze and
he saw how he had no eyes at all, just ragged black holes where they
had been torn out. The man's heart was gone, but try as Manser might
he couldn't remember eating it, or taste the richness of the organ on
his tongue. He supposed he must have consumed it, but then he
couldn't remember killing him, or how he had come to be here.

Manser drew a hand gingerly to his face and flinched when he
felt the crisp, tender mask that it had become. The heat from the
fire had caused his eyelids to melt and slide down over his eyes;
he turned Jez Knowlden's body over, catching a carrion whiff from
those gouged sockets, so he could reach inside his jacket. Knowlden
always carried a pair of nail scissors with him; he wouldn't need them
any more. Manser used them to snip the membranes from his own
brow.

All Manser could smell were the carbonised parts of his body.

Gyorsi had left him for dead. His friend, his mentor, had betrayed
him and as good as murdered him. His throat felt raw where the heat
and smoke had scorched it. He couldn't hear too well because the
shells of his ears had been burned clean away. The forefinger and
middle finger of his left hand had fused together and become little
more than a black claw of protruding bone and ligament.

He wondered if he would be able to come back from this and be
anything like his former self. He doubted it, but here was Knowlden,
and he hadn't killed himself.

In the distance, he thought he could hear sirens. London. So
what? But a tremor of adrenaline drew him upright. Something
didn't feel right. He almost laughed at that; a burned man in a car
park at the Devil's hour, spending time with a cold, opened body,
and something didn't feel right. Maybe Knowlden was wearing odd
socks. Now he did laugh, a brutal, dry cackle that transformed itself
into a painful cough almost immediately.

He shambled away, towards a more complete darkness, away
from the hard sodium glare and open spaces of the shopping centre,
the Toys R Us, the Holiday Inn's inviting lights, at the fringes of the
car park, the low ceiling of the Brent Cross flyover. His instincts were
right. A couple of minutes later, as he moved through shadows that
reeked of stale urine, the hot grease of cheap hamburgers and his own
foggy, smoggy smell (although he cringed to think that all of those
smells might be emanating from his own body), the blue scatter of
lights from police cars and a van tossed and turned the night this way
and that. A couple of unmarked cars brought up the rear. He squinted
through the trees at them and the headache they were inspiring.

They drove right up to the body and immediately half a dozen
armed, heavily armoured policemen leaped out of the van and began
spreading out. High-powered torches sent the night scurrying back a
little more. Over this industry came the distant throb of a helicopter.
He knew that he must hide soon, within the next five minutes, if he
was to escape the infrared cameras on a police chopper. His body
would stand out like a piece of white chocolate on a black carpet.

He hurried along, feeling alternately too hot and too cold, but
knowing that if he discarded his coat he would be dead before he
realised it, either from the freezing November air or a bullet in the
back of the head when his trail was picked up. He heard dogs. What
was this? Not some arbitrary location search. They knew what they
were going to find. And, he realised with a thud in his heart, they
thought they'd find him too.

He found the strength to run, although the movement caused
furious reactions in his face, neck, and left arm. At the far end of the
parking space – an area he guessed was too remote for shoppers, but
a prime location for lovers and junkies – he clambered over a fence
on to a litter-choked walkway alongside the thin thread of water that
was Dollis Brook. Darkness stretched away into what seemed to be
cold miles of empty space. Stars were visible here, just a few hundred
feet away from the light pollution, like spilled talc. He moved through
the long grass, knowing that he was done for. His pathetic, stumbling
figure would be picked up by the thermal imaging cameras within a
few minutes, with him barely a hundred metres along the bank. He
had hoped for busy streets to lose himself in, places bustling with
people. Where was London when you needed it?

He imagined the pilot coming in low, swooping over the crime
scene, moving on across the brook, which was, he realised with
disgust, the most obvious escape route, its cameras trained on the
acres of black, on the look-out for a staggering white ghost. But he
had a chance, as long as he could find something cold to hide
beneath.

He followed the brook as best he could, trying not to slip in the
mud, resisting the temptation to keep feeling that his face was still
where it ought to be. At Staples Corner, where the M1 begins its
journey out of London, he struggled over another fence, dropping
into a slope of gravel and weeds that led down to the railway. He
staggered south, following the moonlight as it skated along the
parallel lines, until he reached Brent Sidings. The helicopter's noise
had bottomed out now; he could see it suspended in the sky, a white
beam poking into the urban landscape, trying to expose him. Without
warning, it swooped his way. He reckoned he would have about
thirty seconds before the cameras picked him up. He must be the
warmest body out on the streets for miles, despite the winter crawling
through his veins.

Shapes emerged from the darkness. Rolling stock. He reached the
first of them and relished the bite of cold the metal gave his fingers –
so cold as to almost cause his skin to fuse to it. He got to his knees
and scrabbled his way under the car until his body was between the
tracks, his face looking up at an underbelly of black steel that smelled
of dead diesel. He heard the helicopter droning, using up its own
reserves of fuel. He counted off the minutes of their search. The
helicopter's buzz grew more distant.

Nothing to report. Must have been picked up by a knight in
shining armour before we could get to him. I'll make another pass,
but it's not looking likely. You'd be better off checking the connecting
roads and paths in the immediate vicinity. Roger and out.

He thought of the things they had discussed, the two of them, in
the restless shadows of the trees. A passing on of knowledge. A secret
history. Before this betrayal. This farewell to arms.

How had it started, that final conversation?

– In 1980, Malcolm, my dear chap, I had my pancreas removed, an
illegal operation conducted by a freelance surgeon, much like Doctor
Losh, the objectionable sawbones in your employ. My pancreas was
in perfect working order. As I fully expected it to be.

Why?

– Because I have perfection in me, Malcolm. I was born to it.

No, I mean, why did you have it removed?

– Oh, I see. Well, it meant that I no longer produced insulin. I
became a diabetic. My blood would become sweeter.

You did it to make your blood sweeter?

– That's right, Malcolm. Yes, I wanted to improve my flavour.

There is an interesting medical anecdote regarding diabetics. If you
walk into a hospital ward and smell pear drops, it usually means,
unless someone is actually eating those sweets, that someone is
suffering – quite badly, I hasten to add – from diabetes. It's the
ketones that are causing the smell. Basically, you need insulin to
transport glucose from the blood to the muscles, where it can be
burned as fuel. If you don't have enough insulin to do this, then the
body converts fat into ketones to use as fuel instead. Too many
ketones, for a diabetic, can spell danger.

You're at risk? You don't take insulin?

– I don't need it. I told you. I'm different. But you tell me. You
smell that fruitiness on my breath? Like pear drops. Like nail varnish.
It's heady. It's seductive.

Yes. I smell it.

– Well, you're not the only one.

Why are you telling me this? Why is this important?

– I'm telling you because I like you, Malcolm. You found me. You
have sustained me, you've kept up certain levels that I've had to
maintain, or I'd fritter away like froth, like flotsam in the wash of a
powerboat. I'm still a player. I still matter. Things are going to
happen in London that will turn your piss to ice, boy. I'm telling you.
Get out while you can. While you still have the blood beating in your
heart. Because believe me, anything alive in the capital when they,
when they
relearn
the art of killing is going to be nothing more to
them than a walking, no, a running,
no
, a
sprinting
snack.

They?

– I should say, we, really. A little offshoot of mankind, one of its
vestigial limbs.

I don't understand.

– No, Malcolm, I know you don't. You're in this for the stumps.
You have base desires, yet pedigree know-how. The thing is, your
devotion to amputees is attractive to me, to us, for the reason that it
signals a need in human beings for the unconventional. We know that
when we reintegrate into society, we will be able to progress, to
seamlessly knit ourselves into that pattern that so violently rejected us
all those years ago.

– I'm putting it formally, I suppose. A different way of explaining
our position would be that we intend to declare war on you fucks
until there's nothing left but human chum. Four hundred years ago,
we were chased out of this city
after being invited, begged to enter it
in the first place.

There's no need to shout at me, Gyorsi, I'm not –

– There's every need. Talking never achieved anything with your
lot. Do you know how many people were killed during the Great Fire
of London in 1666?

It wasn't many. I think it was six. Maybe eight?

– That's what the history books tell us. But they lie. If you believe
it was started in Pudding Lane by a baker called Farriner – Jesus
Christ, who made that up? Mr Fiction of Story Street? – then you'll
believe anything. Thousands died, Malcolm. Thousands of us.

And you want revenge?

– We want what's owed us. A piece of this city. Our own Palestine.
And yes, we want you to feel the suffering we've known. We're hungry.
We've been sucking on fresh air for centuries. We want some meat.

Why now? Why here? Wouldn't it be better to target a small
village first? A sleepy seaside town? London is tough. It knows how
to deal with terrorism.

– Not this kind, believe me. And the current crop of citizens ...
tough? Don't make me laugh. This city is so ripe you can almost smell
it. You know the thing about plague? The weird thing? It comes when
the environment is right. You look at the 1300s when agriculture
failed and the country was ensnared in the Dark Ages. Poor climate.
Famine. A population growing, outstripping the amount of produce
that could feed it. War. Misery. When people are psychologically and
physically prepared for plague, it comes, Malcolm. And it is coming
again. The miasma. The people in this city are slow, fat, weak. They
sit at their desks all day developing haemorrhoids and pilonidal
sinuses. Fat accretes around their hearts. It creeps along their arteries.
Infarctions and cancer hang around the population like hoodlums
chewing matchsticks on street corners but they're being bullied out of
things by the machines and the medicine. Age expectancy might be on
the rise, but only because of the technology its health service can
offer. Your senescence is unnatural, manufactured. We're here as
Mother Nature's agents, to reimpose the balance.

– The fire was started to get rid of us, Malcolm. We were invited
to rid the city of plague, and what thanks did we get? An almighty
torch up our arses. How they must have patted themselves on the
back when the fire was dead and both their blackbirds killed. Well,
just as
yersinia pestis
lives on in its little hidey-holes around the
world, so do we.

What do you want me to do?

– You've played your role, Malcolm. And you've played it well.
You turned in an award-winning performance. It's time to take a bow
and return to the wings. For your own safety, I recommend it.

But I can help you.

– No, you can't. I'm changing, Malcolm. I'm becoming something
that will forget what it means to be human, in the way you know it
to be. And when I've done so, I may lash out at anything in my way.

One of the problems of our breed is a lack of control, or discipline.

I'm hoping to rectify that.

But how can you do that? You're one of them.

– I'm not. Not yet. But I've been building to this moment all my
life, ever since I realised I had their blood in my veins. My mother was
not like your mother, Malcolm. My father was a human being. My
mother loved him for a little while. And she was respectful of his
remains; he's buried somewhere near Oxford. His bones have her
little teeth marks all over them. She had pretty, childish teeth, my
mother.

– These human traits of restraint and discipline, we need them if
we are to abide. Once the firestorm of our making has been damped,
and the Queen installed, I'll introduce level-headedness. I'll introduce
the concept of moderation. Savages will not endure. I will make
gentlemen of monkeys.