The Dead Boy (22 page)

            But
George hated O'Dell, too.

            Wayland
Redman was there, in O'Dell's buried, dislocated memory.

            All
the boys who were taken, in wheelchairs like him, row upon row, all dead except
for their remarkable minds.

            George
ran all the way through O'Dell's life and lost memories, until his feet rested
on the highway home.

            One
glance behind him, and he saw a last memory O'Dell didn't even know he had.

            His
mother, behind a large plate of glass.

           
'Mum?'

            He
faltered.

            Heat
rose, but inside his mind rather than on his skin. Agony crippled George all
over again. His mother wavered and disappeared. In her place, O'Dell was left
and he leered at George with his horrible, yellow-toothed grin.

            'George
Farnham. Honestly, I forgot about you.' This wasn't O'Dell before the bullet.
This was O'Dell after - mad and dangerous and without pity or compassion. O'Dell
tried to kill himself to stop becoming The Man with Fire in his Eyes. He
succeeded, and in doing so allowed this madman to be born.

           
It's
not real,
George told himself, because he had to.
He's distracted...he's
not that powerful.

            'Not
that powerful? You think? You're a kid. A
boy
. You don't know.'

            There
was no help here. Nothing and no one to save him.

           
I...messed
up.

            'You
did, didn't you?'

            George
bowed his head and saw his blood drip from his nose. It dripped onto a black
surface.

           
The
road.

           
'Look at me,
boy. You want to burn, don't you? You're cold, alone? You miss your mummy,
don't you?'

           
He
killed her...he killed everyone.

            'Cute.
You sneak into my mind and try to whisper?'

            For
a second, George thought that maybe O'Dell wasn't even talking to him. O'Dell's
nose bled, even here safe and confident in his own strength.

            'Fucking
kids,' said O'Dell. Talking to George, or some distant memory the boy could no
longer touch?

            It
didn't matter.

            George
concentrated on his blood dripping on the road.

           
Tarmac,
blood, drip.

            Like
a heartbeat, regular, steady.
Drip.
Comforting. Like...

            '
Rain
on a tin roof, George. Listen to US. Rain on a tin roof. You are one of US.
Rain on a...'

            It
wasn't George's voice, but it was similar enough to his. Like his, he knew this
voice was never wrong.

           
Rain
on a tin roof. Follow the sound home.

            He
glanced up, smiled at O'Dell.

           
Rain
on a tin roof.

           
'What?' said the
madman.

            George
gave O'Dell something he learned from Francis in reply. His middle finger.

*

XVII.

The Boss

O'Dell
glanced down at the watch on his wrist.

           
0047:03:56...55...

            Plenty
of time for coffee before Wayland's call. He got up, walked the few steps from
his desk to a coffee machine on a counter against the wall. He clicked the
kettle on, then, his watch began to vibrate against his wrist. A shrill alarm
sounded, too. Loud, but all treble tones.

           
What?

            He
checked his watch again, his frown deepened.

           
0009:59:55...54...

            'What
in fuck?'

            His
alarm, set for ten minutes before his ultimate freedom from the man on the
phone, the man calling in the hits and tugging O'Dell's strings. But...

            O'Dell
checked the phone in his pocket, woke it from standby and checked the time. It
was right there, no lie. If the phone wasn't wrong, and neither was his watch.
He laid his hand against the kettle. Warm, not cold like it should be, and the
switch was off even though he had just pushed it down. Like the kettle had
boiled, switched off, then cooled. Like time had passed with O'Dell simply
standing by the kettle and sink, staring at nothing like some gormless cunt in
a supermarket, looking at three for two offers and trying to work out the
maths.

            He'd
forgotten things before, sure...
but thirty-seven minutes?

            He
looked again, worried now and he wasn't accustomed to being worried about
anything.

           
0009:07:08...07...

           
I
stood here for thirty-seven minutes? Watching the kettle boil and cool...and
don't remember anything?

            He
might not remember anything, but he hadn't suddenly become stupid.

            Somehow,
someone took those minutes away. Only someone remarkable could do that.

            He
searched his thoughts, forced his memory to come back. It was like punching a
cloud, like turning his rage and power on the weather and expecting it to obey.

            Nothing.

           
There
can't be nothing.

            But,
that wasn't true, was it?

            For
some reason a memory surfaced, nothing to do with his effort and more to do
with his subconscious throwing him a lifeline. He focused, then unfocused and
just let it bob to the surface.

           
There...

            A
vision. Children, vacant and dead-enough, their minds reduced to nothing but
computers, parts of their brain matter removed. Nothing more than mannequins,
nothing more. Yet there was something there.

           
Something.

            The
children, half-height, strapped to their idiot wheelchairs so that they
couldn't fall out. Finding the children had been hard.

            Many
grew into adults in those chairs. Many more died.

            Nearly
sixty years in the making, forty-eight, now, since he began to build the
mainframe.

            The
human mind was remarkable. Thousands of
talented
human minds, though?
Working in unison?

            Brain-dead
except for the functions he wanted of them. Remarkable children turned to his
purpose...but nothing children, too. Missing, diminished...and yet...

            O'Dell,
before a long glass window, looking down at them and smiling and a memory of
one of the few times he had felt such a chill as now.

           
'You
burned us,'
they said.
'US.'

            As
one, every child, adult, carcass left inside those triple towers turned their
blind eyes toward O'Dell.

*

George
opened his eyes before Francis. The table, their jumpers, even their hands were
sticky with blood. Not dripping. The sound of sleet, hard on the metal over
their heads. The freezing air in the common room. Even the smell of the two of
them, unwashed, covered in nose blood. These things were wonderful.

            George
thought perhaps that was enough talking for one night. He released Francis, and
instead of calling her, but before he went he placed a dream in her head.

            She
would dream of warm rain on a caravan, a holiday, and a time without pain.

            It
would be enough, until she woke.

            He
laid his head on the table, same as her. Francis slept, but George could not.
His mind whirled, a storm of thoughts. His mother, O'Dell's sorrow, now dead.
O'Dell's rage, still alive. For how much longer?

            Did
it matter?

            Thoughts
a child should not have to think alone. About his death, and the death of
everything that remained. O'Dell was done. Why fight any longer? What was there
to win?

            Round
and round those thoughts ran inside his nine-year old mind. That older voice
tried to calm him, but he could not calm himself.

            His
sobbing must have woken Francis from her rainy dream, because some time later
he felt her hand on his.

           
'George?
Why are you crying?'

            He
liked Francis a lot. He'd nearly killed her.            

            O'Dell's
mind wouldn't leave. The taint was inside George now. The man's memories and
thoughts and the awful things he'd done, but more than all that it was the
sorrow that hit George, and kept hitting him. The sorrow would not let him be.

            O'Dell
knew he would have to watch everything die, and that he would make everything
die, and he'd still tried to stop it.

            Now
George was following right along. Everything he touched was dying.

            Edgar
would die. Francis. His father was dead. His mother...

            The
image of her, her skull torn open, was bile inside his small boy's thoughts. Her
highway made small, a winding dirt track, leading nowhere.

            George
shook his head. He couldn't talk about it. He wouldn't. But he and Francis were
connected, and even though he tried to keep it all inside, she took some of it.
She picked it up, despite that he tried to quell it. But then, perhaps he
wanted her to understand. Perhaps he didn't try hard enough. Perhaps...

           
'George.
Stop it. It's okay, George. It's okay.'

            She
didn't ask what he saw through the highway in her mind, all the way back to
O'Dell. Some, she saw. Some, he hid.

            George
couldn't stop sobbing. Huge, heavy sobs. A muted wail from his broken mouth,
clogged with blood and snot. He was disgusted with himself, with the feel of
O'Dell, with the whole rotten world.

            But
Francis was not the kind to give up. She never was. She didn't push George
away. She was not repulsed by him, by what he was, or could be. She didn't shy
from the thoughts that swamped his mind. She moved to George's side of the
table and held him.

           
'I'm
tired Francis. I'm trying to be brave...but I can't. I'm scared.'

            Francis
kissed his head and stroked his hair. She made simple, soothing noises. After a
time, he pushed himself into her and she held him tighter and he let her.

            '
No
one needs you to be brave, George. It's okay, you know? You're nine. You're not
supposed to be doing this alone. And you're not. I'm here.'

           
She kissed his
hair over and over while he cried.

            'You're
the only one who forgot you're just a boy, honey.'

            He
was glad that Francis remembered. Then, he remembered something.

            A
winding dirt road...a road leading off. Narrow, strewn with weeds and debris
and blown over with dirt and dust...but a road.

           
Francis,
he said.
My mother. She's alive.

*

The
stairway to the twenty-third floor was enclosed, protected from the weather
that battered the old concrete with enough power for the structure to sway.
Inside, away from the elements, ice still coated the walls and risers. Each
step was lethal, and Wayland Redman bled. His heart struggled, weakened by age
and pain. But he kept on, driven by fear, and by anger, and by hate.

            At
the seventh floor he slipped and hit his ravaged right hand hard. He
overreacted and fell forward, hands out. His hands were too weak to stop his
fall. He opened a gash on his chin and his remaining two fingers broke.

            Between
the twentieth and twenty-first floors he let go of loose, watery shit inside
his trousers. He didn't mind, then. At least something was warm, if only for a
short time.

            When
he reached the top floor, then the last corridor, then the last room, he
thought he would die. Exhausted, old, every single thing aching and hurting and
pounding.

            Seventy-five,
he thought.
Fucking did it.

            He
opened the door, unlocked.

            Silent,
for perhaps two, three minutes. He couldn't find any words.

           
'Fuck.'

            Rows
of computer readouts. Vital signs. Thousands of them, on monitors all around a
stark room of steel and glass.

            Images
on monitors. Names along with each. Within a minute, Wayland understood just
what the tower block was. Perhaps, he thought, even all three.

            One
vast computer. O'Dell's boss was O'Dell, and he had invented him from a
thousand tortured human parts.

*

O'Dell
seized, remembering the children. When his vision returned, awareness of his
endeavours faded once again, as it always did.

            For
O'Dell, the transition was seamless. He lost time, and it was because someone
had been inside. In his thoughts and memories. Someone with talents like his.
Power like his.

            Who?
There were none left, were there?

            Then
he remembered.

            'The
woman?
Her?'

            The
woman at The Mill. He'd given her his gun, turned his back on her.

           
What
the fuck was I thinking?

           
Jesus,
he thought. That was before everything...the field trial...

            Memory
was an elusive adversary, for O'Dell. His white whale, hunted time and again.
This time he snatched it before it could sink back to the depths.

            'She
took a kid.'

           
How
the fuck did I forget something like that? Why in the name of fuck would I let
them go?

            She
took one of the dead boys...but she hadn't been like the kids. The woman had
been nothing special. But the kid.

            'A
fucking
kid
did this? Got in my head?'

            Suddenly,
other memories surfaced...memories that the sneaky fucker had taken from
him
.

            His
watch trembled against his wrist again. The shrill reminder brought O'Dell back
from the brink of rage. He breathed deeply.

            He
was dangerously angry...the kind of angry he got when people died. But there
was hardly anyone around to kill, was there?

            He
could shoot himself in the head. But he'd tried that, once, long ago, hadn't
he?

            While
he couldn't kill anyone with his hands...he could with another's. He looked at
his watch again, and calmed himself until he was cold and his sweat cooled and
his breathing steady, solid.

           
All
fine and good,
he told himself.
Back in the game.
For some reason he
couldn't imagine, he saw the game he played.

            It
was solitaire.

            Annoyed,
again, O'Dell shrugged off the image. He checked his watch a final time and
stared at the phone until it rang, that tight-jawed grin hardwired into his
brain by a bullet and his immense rage.

*

The
phone shuddered on the counter beside the kettle. O'Dell picked his coffee mug
up, empty, and hurled it at the wall. Shards still moved as he straightened his
shirt and jacket, then answered, calm, courteous, to the man who was about to
die.