Johnny trailed a couple of steps behind them, staring wildly around at the stretch of town they were passing through, as if through new eyes. He had never noticed how much life there was out here. He had also never known how dead it could be at the same time. It was quieter than it had been for days.
Robyn snuggled in to Mika’s strong, comfortable arms and settled her head into the side of his chest as they walked along. If it wasn’t for the grown man trailing after them like a little lost puppy, they could have passed for any other couple. Appearances were so important when trying to hide a big secret like theirs. If anyone even suspected… well, it would not be pleasant. Not the type of thing that one could ignore as easily as they ignored their very presence. Johnny used his thumb to wipe a little sticky, fresh blood from his mouth and wiped it down the leather jacket he was wearing.
Robyn entered the house that she and Mika had made their home five years previously, and slammed the door when the two men had walked in. She wondered what had happened to the real owners – were they still chained up together in the cellar where she had left them, had they just rotted away into a couple of skeletons, maybe they had done the impossible and escaped – then shook her head. She didn’t really care, though she was curious as to how effective her methods had been.
Mika sat down on the stairs, looking up at her. “I haven’t done it like that since… I can’t remember when.”
“But it felt right, didn’t it? Natural. Because that’s how you started.” Robyn had returned to her blissful, ruthless, old self again. She could see the worry in Mika’s eyes now, and was determined to show him that he had no reason to worry. “Mika, I won’t let them get me. I won’t stay in their world – it hurts and I don’t like it. I like it here. I like what I am.”
That was more than Johnny could say with any kind of conviction. He wasn’t sure if he liked what he was at all. Okay, it felt good, it came easily – and he could almost let himself believe that it was right. But his fading, dying, human nature kept kicking up his logic. How could it be right to hurt someone so badly? And then be supposed to forget it? When he had used guns, at least there was the chance of them surviving, the chance of him being slightly off-target. He had enjoyed what he’d done tonight, though. Had not erased it from his memory, in fact was enjoying the thought – remembering how delicious it was feeling the mans energy flow into him, how it –
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” asked Robyn.
Johnny jerked his head up wondering if there had been some tell-tale sign on his face of what he was thinking. “What?”
“Making that kill. Knowing excatly how much pain you’re inflicting, knowing just what they’re feeling. Because you’ve felt it.” Still talking to Johnny, she straddled Mika nibbling, seductively, at his neck. “It’s like an adrenaline rush. Can’t you just feel it, surging through every part of you?”
“Yeah, I can feel it. And it’s good. But it has to be wrong?”
“Why?” Robyn gasped softly. “Why does this have to be wrong?”
“Just give in to it.” Mika seemed to remember saying that a few times over the past 24 hours, it was important though. “How can this not be right? It’s who you are now, it’s useless trying to resist it. It will get you in the end.”
Mika lifted Robyn off of him and stood up. His eyes were burning, Johnny could almost feel them searing into him. “What is it?”
“You. We give you the greatest gift in the world, and you throw it back at us as if it were some sort of toy.”
“No, I’m not,” blurted Johnny. Mika didn’t sound angry – it was his pronounced cool that was slightly more eerie. “I just don’t under-“
“Robyn?” Mika sounded composed but she detected a hint of fear in his tone. “What’s doing this to me?”
Robyn didn’t answer and got up, felt for the doorknob and turned it. She pushed it open and saw Carly staring, bleary-eyed at a blank computer screen. It took Carly a few seconds to even register their arrival, but, even then, she was less than bothered, just staring at the blacked out monitor without blinking. “I turned it off,” she told them dreamily. “It made my head go all fuzzy so I turned it off. It’s a bad, bad…” what was the word? She couldn’t remember it – sod it. “…thing.” She was so tired that she didn’t see the menacing smile on Johnny’s face, nor the impatient yet understanding expressions on Mika’s and Robyn’s faces.
“Sleep now,” Robyn told her, helping her over to the thin, folding bed. “You can show us what you’ve done in the morning.”
“but, I did what you told me to. Decoded them all – don’t you want to see?” she protested, weakly. She was much too tired to put up more of a fight, and gratefully crawled onto the hard, mattress, not caring that springs were beginning to poke through. “I worked so… hard.” Carly yawned and curled up. “Tomorrow, I’ll show you… might be… too late.”
Mika and Robyn glared at each other, completely forgetting about Johnny in the corner. “Too late?” repeated Mika. “How can we be too late?”
“We won’t be too late. The stars tell me so – if they’re still twinkling and shining, we have time. We’ll save them. We’ll save them all,” she said, confidently. “It was meant to be this way, Mika. Things get bad, the bad gets worse and everyone is in mortal danger, then we stop it and everything goes right again.”
“It’s not that simple, baby. I wish it was.”
“Why can’t it be that simple?” Tears shone in her eyes and threatened to fall. “I don’t like feeling like this Mika.” She knew she didn’t need to explain to Mika how she felt – she could tell that he was going through the same things as she.
“It takes time, Robyn. We’ll work on it again when Carly wakes up.”
Robyn fiddled with her painted nails – red tonight, blood red – and nodded. She understood why she had to be patient, why she had to let things happen at their own speed, but she just wanted this to be over. It wasn’t right – what they were being made to feel.
In the corner, Johnny lifted his head and asked, “Work on what?”
NINE
Satisfied that his spell had worked, the shaman packed his things away – papers, herbs, point stones from his pentagram – in a navy holdall and stood up. He was exhausted and felt like he could easily fall asleep where he was standing, but had the presence of mind to look around him to ensure that he had not been seen. If anyone even suspected what he was doing… No, he wasn’t going to think about that.
The magicks he had been using were extremely strong and left him feeling unusually light-headed. He would not know until the morning if his spell had worked properly, but knew at once that it had not gone wrong. There was a shift in the atmosphere when things went awry – the lack of change suggested that it had either worked well, or done nothing at all. Calling on such powers was why he had been sent here. But to use them for such purposes?
The woods in which he was standing filled with an invigorating combination of scents from his spell ingredients. It reminded him of the oldest of his tribe who had once taught him as a youngster. Oh, how much he had learned since that day; how much he was yet to learn.
Slowly, he picked up his holdall and began to make his way out of the woods. Everything was quiet and still. What if his presence in the woods had disturbed that balance? No, he shouldn’t let himself think that way. Soon he would never have to worry about anything again. The vegetation that was slowly dying would flourish once more. There would be no more darkness for people to lurk in. No-one would get hurt again. That was the idea of this whole thing – to give everyone a perfect world, without anyone, or anything that might cause them harm. He could already see which people were going to make it through the next week, and which ones wouldn’t.
“Heaven on Earth?” repeated Johnny, trying to ignore the rumblings of his stomach in the morning. According to Mika, it was normal to feel hungry
in the morning, when you felt that tingle of morning sun outside. The trick was not letting that hunger fuel every action. But he couldn’t understand why he shouldn’t just give in to it – they both said submission was a good thing. They were adamant, though, that he needed to resist this. “How can that possibly be a bad thing?”
Robyn was still sleepy and curled up against Mika. She lifted her head and looked at Johnny, not having the energy to form words. Why had she insisted on having him? Now, anyway? Things were complicated enough at the moment, what with the mysterious plan that they knew next to nothing about, without having to show Johnny the ropes. It wasn’t even as if she could teach him properly in such… unusual circumstances. She only knew what the stars had told her. Robyn could feel the metal chain of the necklace she had worn for days cold against her neck. She suddenly became aware that Mika had said something – why did she keep missing parts of conversations.
“I mean lots of yummy little people running around like headless chickens. What could be bad about that?”
“What could be bad about it?” Mika chuckled, astounded at his naivety. The wonder of youth, he supposed. “It’s wrong. That’s bad about it.”
“But, it’s a free for all.” He couldn’t see the problem. “That’s not wrong. It just makes life – death,” he corrected, “- a hell of a lot easier for us.”
“Don’t you see?” piped up Robyn, tiredly. “Whatever is making these people hurt each other is wrong. Hurting people is our job.” Her face took on a familiar shadowed, knowing look as she peeped out through thick, fallen locks of red hair. “They’re messing with the rules again.”
“What is it? Are you getting more messages?”
In contrast to Mika’s seemingly never0ending patience with the girl, Johnny folded his arms and sucked his cheeks in, refusing to watch them. He was already fed up with her funny turns, her trips to la-la land. Maybe she had always been like this, in which case he felt sorrier for Mika than for Robyn.
“What are they telling you, baby?” Mika asked, using one hand to push her hair away from her face.
“Don’t let them get me.” She whimpered and cuddled tighter to her protector.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone hurt my little bird. Now, what are they saying?”
“Go and see Carly. They whispering – sssh.” She held one finger to her lips and listened to some inaudible sound or other. “Quiet. They’re scared of something so they have to be quiet. They tell us to go and see Carly. She has all the secrets.”
“But, what if she decides not to help us.”
Robyn was quite sure that the girl would help them to finish this now that they had got this far. Why would she settle for living in the midst of what was happening, and whatever it was leading up to? “She will,” she said, confidently. “And f not, we’ll use him.” Her eyes settled on Johnny’s cold, hard face. “It’s why he’s here.”
“What if I don’t want to help?”
Robyn loosed Johnny’s arm a little and let him walk towards her. “Look at him.”
“So unpredictable,” Mika said, voice quiet and menacing. “Just don’t know what he’s going to do next.”
Carly was not scared. She could hear the threats on his voice, the blind urge to feed from Johnny, but she was not intimidated. “What if I want to let them go through with this? What if I really don’t want people to get hurt in the future?”
“And letting all these people getting hurt beyond human endurance makes it okay now? You want people to hurt each other now so they won’t do it again.” Robyn was almost scared by what was happening; it would kill her. It would kill her family – Mika. She was starting to want reasons for things. That had never happened before – she had never needed things to make sense before. The world changed; they didn’t understand it. That was just the way things were; the way they had always been.
Mika held Johnny’s shoulder, it took most of his strength to make him stay still, and looked at him with something like disgust. Or, maybe it was just dislike. “You stay away from the girls,” he warned.
Robyn reached out to her side and felt for the cold, cement wall as if she couldn’t see it properly. It was cold to the touch, she noticed, and the red paint began to flake of in her hand. She wondered how long it had been up there. “Red.” She lifted her fingers from the wall and stared at them, skin dotted with red paint. Then, she looked at the blood red varnish on her nails and cried out in horror. “I’m stained!”
Mika looked at her but didn’t let go of the impulsive Johnny. How could he do both, look out for both of the girls in the room? Carly rubbed her eyes tiredly, catching on to the look. So what if Robyn wanted to hurt her, she could hardly leave her to cry. Carly was a caring person and went over to her. This was another thing that defied all logic – she was perfectly willing to help the monsters who killed her boyfriend, but was unable to go to the aid of someone who was about to die. It didn’t need to make sense, she didn’t think she needed to understand these things – they just were.
“Robyn?” She offered her hand. “Come on. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re not stained.”
Hesitantly, Robyn took the proffered hand and allowed Carly to help her to the bed, where she curled up and started rocking back and forth, shying away from her touch. “Don’t touch me. I’m dirty.”
“No, Robyn. You’re not dirty,” Carly lied.
Mika strained against Johnny’s pulling shoulder and realised that he couldn’t hold him back any longer. He let go of him as he kept tugging and watched as he ran towards both women. Johnny was going to kill them both. And there was nothing that Mika could do to stop him.
Carly saw him loom over them both out of the corner of her eye, slavering in unbridled blood lust. She screamed, high and long.
“They brought this on themselves.”
The shaman stared at an empty photo frame on Gareth Jordan-Smyths’ desk and glanced up at his companion. There were patches of dried blood still on the carpet, faded in spots where the cleaners had scrubbed at it. He stepped in them as he went over to the window. Everything that indicated that Mr Jordan-Smyth had ever occupied that office had been cleared away, so it was almost comforting to think there was still some part of him there. The professor thought it was just disturbing.
“Sorry?”
“This - all of it. They wanted it, and now they don’t know how to handle it.”
“You’ve lost me.”
They both gazed out of the window and saw a familiar scene. It was a pile-up in the FDR car park. Until a few days ago this would have been a rare, freak occurrence. Now, it was expected – not wanted, but expected.
“People fighting, hurting each other. This happened before we started any of this.”
Professor Wright furrowed his brow and cleared his throat. “But not on this scale.”
“No, not in these proportions,” the shaman agreed, then paused for a moment, deep in thought. “They still did it though.”
“You’re not making any sense to me.”
“Put it like this. Everyone was crying out for peace, right? But they were always having wars and hurting each other. So now we’re giving them total peace but letting them get all their violence out first. Because there’s always a big battle before peace can be called.”
“I think I understand. The storm before the calm?”
The shaman nodded, doubting that he really understood that at all. But, neither of them were here to think or understand – they were here to change the world.
“It’s too late to stop this now,” he said. “People demanded this and they’re getting it. Whether they’re prepared to see it through, or not.”
“How do you do that? Why do you do that?”
The shaman shot him a questioning look, and mindlessly closed his fingers around the silver photo frame, stroking the glass with his thumb. Beneath the robes, the p
rofessor couldn’t see and stepped back.
“I mean just change your mind like that. One minute you’re thinking that maybe this isn’t such a good idea, the next you’re filled with doubt, the next you’re gunning for it.”
“You just have to be able to see it from different points of view,” he answered at length. “It’s for the best.”
A scream cut through the air, above the other sounds of chaos, sweet chaos. Intruder alarms rang out through the streets, sending simultaneous, wailing alerts to uncaring emergency services. Fire hydrants and metal signposts had been wrenched from their positions on walls and street corners, causing water to flow freely down the road and shards of steel to be strewn across the carriageway. But, somehow, neither the shaman nor the professor seemed overly worried by this frenzied scene that would have shocked a million world leaders, past, present and future. They remained calm, telling themselves over and over that this was necessary to reach their goal.
Andrew nodded his head in agreement, slow with uncertainty at first, then more definitely as he pushed any niggling doubts away. “Of course it is. Survival of the fittest.”
The shaman looked at him, wordlessly, but inwardly wanting to correct him – survival of the purest.
“He’s got a hard head.”
Johnny lay sprawled out on the floor, unconscious. Mika stood in the corner of the room, his eyes flitting between the girls and his unconscious comrade. Robyn blew on her sore and burning knuckles as she fell back on the mattress, not fully aware of what she had just achieved. Carly put a hesitant arm around her, fearful of what she was capable of.
“My hand hurts.”
“I thought you liked pain?”
“Only the fun kind.” Robyn stared at Johnny, then at Mika, finally coming to rest on Carly. “Why are you being nice to me? You should hate me.”