Decay Inevitable

“I’ve always dreamt of that place–” they both said.

IT WASN’T TELEPATHY, but Emma understood him, and trusted him, more than anybody else she had known. She had dreamed of the hill and its strange population ever since childhood, but she had never credited it with much thought beyond her sleeping hours. She had no idea what it signified, if anything, nor did she pay much heed to it, until now, when Sean confessed of his own awareness of the place.

Sean said, “Pardoe told me that Inserts were agents who were trained to work in unusual territories. Under unusual conditions.”

Emma shook her head. “But I don’t recall being trained for anything.”

He wasn’t fazed by that. “You know I’m telling you the truth. We share the same dreams. I don’t remember being trained either. I just know something happened when I was younger. Something bad.”

She shrugged. “Race memory. Coincidence. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not because I’m an Insert, or a Pervert or whatever jargon it is that you’re trying to sell me.”

“Pardoe says that we are in danger if we stay here. Anywhere, more than a few days at a time.”

“Oh really? Why?”

“He says that we’ll be tracked down and destroyed.”

Losing patience now. “By whom?”

“Whoever it was that trained us in the first place, when we were kids. They thought we weren’t fully formed when we escaped, that we couldn’t have any sway on what happened. But obviously we can. He says that the same ripple that alerted him could also alert the people who got us involved.”

He made to take another swig of his whisky, but he had finished it. The bartender noticed and brought a bottle over.

“You saw that thing, that doorway in Myddleton Lane,” Sean continued when the bartender had taken up his original position. “We almost went through, for God’s sake.”

Emma nodded. “What is that place?”

“Pardoe kept referring to it as the Zoo. I don’t know.” Sean rubbed the back of her neck with his fingers. He noticed that the guys playing pool had picked up on the bandages covering his wrists. The bandages that were staining heavily.

“Look, Emma, do you think you could help me staunch some of this blood? It’s getting a bit too obvious. I mean, do you think I’ll ever stop bleeding?”

Emma rummaged in her coat pockets and pulled out some fresh packets of gauze. “What’s the Zoo? And how can we influence what happens in it?”

“I don’t know what the Zoo is. I suppose it’s the area we dream of. And I don’t know how we affect what goes on in there. But someone thinks we do. And feels threatened enough to do something about it.”

Sean was looking tired. She felt sorry for giving him such a hard time, but she couldn’t accept the way things were panning out. Her entire life so far had been dangerous, but predictable. It was when events started getting so that she couldn’t second-guess them that she became worried.

Sean said, “I need this. It might help me to find who killed my parents. Who killed Naomi. Naomi was a part of it. She was like us. They want us dead.” His face was set and she could see this was something he had been patiently waiting for all his life. He was hooked. He said, “You’re not convinced, are you?”

She shook her head, a little sad smile trying to soften the blow. And then: “I don’t know.”

“Let’s get back,” he said. He said: “I love you.”

RAIN, AND LOTS of it.

Marshall left a dent in a corrugated fence, failing to stop as he barrelled out of the alleyway opposite the tower block. He hardly felt his knee smarting. All he could think about was the gun in his hand and the need to get up the stairwell without expiring. The smell of toasted car and petrol hung around his clothes and clogged his nostrils, flooding his throat with a burn that at least kept him awake.

He had never seen anyone move like that before. He looked back. She was nowhere to be seen.

He wiped his face with a soaking handkerchief. Okay. Up ahead, losing itself to the sheet of rain above the streetlamps, stood Bagg Tower, one of the less savoury estate buildings in this part of the city. He picked up his pace, splashing out into the main road, having to climb over the bumpers of the parked cars clogging the street. As he stepped onto the road a shot rang out and he watched his left hand turn to mist at the end of his arm.

It’s not hurting, he thought, a moment before the pain exploded up his side and swamped his mind. Gritting his teeth, he dashed into the shadows beneath the punched-in forecourt of the estate, grateful that the streetlamps were smashed and the windows on the first two floors dead or boarded up. He chanced another look back from the safety of the dark but still couldn’t see anything. Another shot: the shell scorched his cheek as it screamed by and embedded itself in the wall.