The Return of the Arinn Page 12

  He growled, then closed his eyes. But a moment later he opened them again, looking around at all five of them, as if making sure they all felt bound by Tajh’s promise. He didn’t bother to argue further. His eyes just followed them as they moved several beds down the facility to take a look at Padraig, who was receiving the attentions of two separate doctors. One of them was Major Mackie.

  Mark said, ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Central venous pressure is now normal. So at least we have the dehydration under control.’

  ‘His breathing seems a bit quieter.’

  ‘That snorting type of breathing was down to ketosis. He’s still ketotic but much less so, and we’ve definitely ruled out diabetes. Brutal starvation will do that. Did those bastards feed the poor beggar at all?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Well, we’re pouring calories and essential nutrients into him. That’s to say our intensivist, Doctor Ghosh here, is.’

  Mark glanced at an Asian doctor in short-sleeved green scrubs who was fiddling with the mechanical ventilator. When he spoke it was to Dr Mackie, ignoring the crew: ‘Oxygenation now ninety-eight per cent.’

  ‘That’s excellent. Poor chap – what a mess! The infection, the fluids and even the nutrition are all potentially manageable. The big problem is here.’ Mackie tapped his right index finger against Padraig’s emaciated brow.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘He’s still deeply comatose.’

  ‘He’s not . . .?’ Tajh left the question unfinished.

  ‘Brain dead? To tell you the truth, we did wonder. But the pupils are now equal and responding to light. To begin with one of them was non-responding, so we reckon there must have been a head injury. Most likely from a beating. MRI doesn’t show a clot, or serious physical injury. We did a toxin screen and there’s no drugs. All fits with coma resulting from dehydration, starvation and some beating. But don’t get too alarmed. We’ve performed two separate electro-encephalograms and there’s basic activity still hanging in there.’

  Mackie gently elevated Padraig’s eyelids, so he could look down into those astonishingly blue eyes. Then he turned Padraig’s head, first to his right, then all the way over to his left.

  ‘You see that?’

  ‘His eyes moved in the opposite direction.’

  ‘Doll’s eye reflex! It means his brain stem is operating. His vital signs are settling, his airway’s clear. His heartbeat is slow. His pulse is at 30, which is very slow, but it’s steady and he’s got a good, solid blood pressure. Some aspects of this are remarkable, given the circumstances. If we weren’t in the middle of a war we’d be writing it up in the journals.’

  ‘What’s the likely outcome?’

  ‘It’s as if the old fellow’s central nervous system has just shut down. We see it with the more severe coma cases, but there are several levels of shutdown the body goes through when in a deep coma.’

  ‘Do you mean it’s something like locked-in syndrome?’

  ‘He has signs suggestive of that. We’ve seen his eyes suddenly begin to move, perhaps in dreaming, which again makes us think he retains at least some aspects of higher cerebral function. However, this is impossible to assess while he’s on the ventilator. But my guess we’re dealing with a locked-in state.’

  ‘What can you do, Doctor?’

  ‘There are techniques called deep stimulation. We can try something like that when we get him off the machine, but not yet. First let’s get the infection, dehydration and starvation fully sorted out. Then’ – he inclined his head – ‘perhaps we shall see.’

  A Hidey Hole

  For the umpteenth time, Gully stopped cycling to shove his glasses up the cold wet bridge of his nose. His legs had turned to jelly, his crotch ached, and his saddle bone throbbed with such a sharp pain that it felt like his arse had been roasted in a chip pan.

  Gotta take a breather!

  Strewth! How he felt right now, no way was he going to be fit enough to ride again tomorrow. Maybe just an hour or two of rest would do the trick. Just need to pick the right spot. But all he could find was some bits of broken down walls – what might once have been a barn next to a snow-covered hawthorn. It’d have to do. Maybe lean the bike over hisself to make a shelter? He pushed the seat and the handlebars against the broken wall and threw the blanket over the bike, curling up under it. But it wasn’t easy to get to sleep. He kept waking up again with the perishing cold.

  The cold woke him up for the umpteenth time. His trainers and his jeans was soaked and freezing. He didn’t know if it was ice had crept in around the edge of the blanket, or melting snow had dripped right through it. He squirmed around, trying to lift his legs up so he could rub the numbness out of his toes. That was when he noticed the quiet.

  So wot! Birds is mostly quiet at night. Just the bleedin’ country is all.

  But it was never silent like this back in Our Place. Back there it was the cooing of the pigeons what woke him. Now he couldn’t help listening to the silence.

  He heard a loud moaning. Unearthly it was, so deep and lost, it shook him wide awake.

  When he peered out from the edge of the soaking blanket, he became even more confused. What should have been the black sky of night was all lit up.

  Gawd!

  He didn’t rightly know what was wrong. At least the snow had stopped falling, if only for the moment. Gully twisted his neck around to stare up in the direction of the sky where lights all the colours of the rainbow was streaking out all over the heavens, snaking and curling, and wheeling and blazing.

  Gotta be somefink to do with London.

  Then there was that moan again.

  What could be moaning like that? Was it some kind of a beast, like a cow – or a hog? Not that he had much idea of what a hog sounded like. Whatever it was, it sounded a bit too close for comfort. Gully groaned as he tried to sit up. He batted the blanket with his numbed hand to shake the snow off it, then he tried to shove the bicycle off him. His arms had never felt so stiff. He felt around himself. Using the strange multi-coloured light coming down out of the sky, he looked for his carrier bag containing most of what was left of his food and water. Shit! He couldn’t find the bag.

  Stop, look, listen!

  He did it for a second time: he stopped, looked, and listened.

  The silence hadn’t gone away.

  Gully didn’t want to think about it. He was frightened enough already. It ain’t safe here, Gully, mate. A shiver of fear was rising in him, worrying him. It felt like something really bad was going to happen. You gotta get out of here! He scratched his head, then touched his pockets, from one to six, but he found no useful ideas there. He counted to ten, then counted to twenty to see if that would help him figure what to do.

  Oh, ’eck!

  He sighed with relief on feeling the backpack. Not that there was much left in it. He whispered to himself as he counted it up: ’alf an apple and an ’eel of bread.

  He didn’t know why he was whispering to himself, but just as he brought the apple to his mouth, he heard that drawn-out moan again. He wondered if, maybe, he saw something moving out there. A shadowy bulk. It didn’t look like no cow or a hog. It looked the size of a crane. The hackles sprang up on the back of his neck.

  Then it moaned again and he caught such a terrifying glimpse of it he immediately grabbed the backpack, scrambled out from behind the bicycle and took off running with the bike. He hopped onto the saddle, causing the thing to wobble and weave all over the place before he brought it under his control. There was no question of switching on the torch. He hurtled on with desperate abandon into the weird lit-up night.

  *

  He cycled in the near dark for something like maybe two or three miles. He had come off the road a few times in the dark, but only come off the bike twice and there was no serious damage done. He’d torn po
cket left 1 – K for keys wide open, so everything in there had fallen out into the ice-filled gully where he had landed. But he didn’t try to look for the keys. He didn’t give a monkey’s about the keys! There wasn’t no door he’d be opening soon. And he knew that moaning thing was on his tail. You ain’t for stopping, Gully, not even if your arse is on fire! Trouble was, his legs didn’t care. His legs was giving up on him because they wanted to stop pedalling.

  Gotta keep going . . .

  His legs was stiffening up like boards. And now the gears was making a screeching noise that told him the oil was run out.

  Shit!

  He rested from pedalling on the long gradual downslope of a hill, peering into the darkness, looking for someplace to hide.

  ‘Shiiiiit!’

  He felt the bike slew and went flying for the third time. He tumbled, entangled in the bars and wheels and peddals, into a mess of brambles. His clothes and skin were ripped by the thorns until he was brought to a halt by a low, broken wall.

  ‘Oh, gawd!’

  His head was spinning. He felt a deep pain in his brow, above his right eye, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his right elbow. He was too stunned to do anything about it. He just lay there all twisted up in the ditch, with his face in the dirt and the brambles entwining him, and he wondered if this was the spot where his bones would rest until the day of judgement.

  He must have blacked out. When he came to again the pain, in his brow and his elbow, was even worse. He tried to ignore it and get back onto his feet, but nothing happened.

  Stay cool. Just got to figure it . . .

  He tested his limbs slowly, a bit at a time. Parts of him was working, but the rest of him didn’t sort of gel with it. All the bits of him was out of kilter.

  Gotta figure it out, mate!

  Pressing his right hand against the thorn-strewn ground, he tried to push himself onto his knees. He fell back flat on his face and groaned.

  Strewth! Wot’s going on?

  He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He tried again, but his right hand just couldn’t hold him up. Gotta figure it . . . He tried his other hand, feeling around until it found the rubble-strewn top of the broken down wall. It felt slippery with ice. He continued to feel around until he found a solid stone that ought to bear his weight. He pulled on it and managed to get his right heel against the ground; from there he levered himself into a sitting position. He just sat there for a while, leaning back against the broken wall, waiting for the dizziness to settle.

  He must have fainted because he was inside of a dream in which he was a kid again, sitting on a stained mattress, which lay on a bare wood floor. He could hear cussing and arguing in the room outside.

  ‘I’m taking him.’

  ‘’Ark at her – interfering auld bitch!’

  ‘I already told the cahnsel. You want me to call the police?’

  ‘Oh – let her take ’im, Sammy.’

  ‘Fuck off! Interfering auld bitch!’

  ‘Let her take ’im.’

  ‘Take the piece o’ shite, then.’

  That was him – Gully. He was the piece of shite.

  Oh, Nan!

  Nan came into the bedroom and stood over him, round as a dumpling, wearing a rain-soaked purple fleece, her thinning henna-dyed hair plastered to her head.

  ‘Just look at the state of you, Gully Doughty!’

  There was something different about her today. A new determination.

  ‘I come to take you with me. I got a flat off the cahnsel.’

  Then she was dressing his shivering body, and talking to him at the same time. ‘Why do this, eh? Why do noffink for your own child?’

  He said nothing. Why didn’t matter. Why didn’t come into it. There was no reason why.

  When she hugged him, his body stiffened. He wasn’t used to being hugged.

  ‘How d’you like to live with your old Nan?’

  He nodded. He couldn’t speak. If he opened his gob he might find it was all a dream.

  ‘Them at the cahnsel – I told ’em I got a dependent young’un on account o’ your being practickly abandoned.’

  He could feel her warmth through the sodden fleece as she hugged him again.

  In his sleep, he mouthed the words that Nan had murmured: ‘Nah, Gully Doughty, you’re coming with me.’

  Only with the words spoken, and the certainty of escape established, did he open his eyes to admit to himself it was a memory – a dream. There was no Nan here to comfort him. He found that his right eye didn’t altogether open. He had to squint out through a swollen lid to discover that he was still sitting in a bramble hedge, his back against a broken down wall. He knew now that he must have slept because he was soaked to the skin and it was dawn. Only feet away, three sparrows was fighting amongst themselves. It might have been their chittering woke him. They didn’t seem to notice him anyway. They was so close he could see the colours on every feather. Tears of pain came into his eyes as he slowly levered his body and head around, so he could take a grip once more on the broken wall with his left hand.

  ‘Oh, bollix!’

  Inch by inch, he manoeuvred himself to a standing position, panting through gritted teeth. He patted his pockets, reminding himself of the loss of left 1. He searched for his backpack in the snow-covered brambles, only to find it broken open. The partly filled bottle of gin had been shattered, but it was no matter, as the glass was on the ground and not in the pack. What was left of the bread had fallen out of it. That was what the sparrows was fighting over.

  He didn’t care.

  I just don’t give a monkey’s.

  He was still thinking about Nan. Bridget was her name – her friends had called her Bridge. Bridge, with her grey hair in a bun and her brown eyes wide with outrage, insisting on holding his hand as they were walking through the rubbish-filled room and out into the driving rain. Bridge hugging him when his drunk dad slammed the door.

  Gully had been nervous for months that they’d come after him and take him back. But they never came. Not even to ask about him.

  ‘Don’t you worry, they show their faces ’ere and I find a new use for them scissors.’

  She called him Dahlin’, and he loved her. When she died he hadn’t known what to do. He’d wrapped her up in blankets, but the smell got bad and they’d come to take her away. There was Police stuff. He was accused of storing the body. But what could he have done? He refused to believe she was dead. They burned her someplace, they didn’t tell him where. The darkness came back. And then, right in the middle of it, the Razzers was burning all over the place and nobody took any notice of Gully.

  Shit! Stop this now! You gotta do somefink about this situation.

  He manoeuvred himself through the pain onto his left hand and his knees. He ignored the fact he was covered in thorns and other shit. It was snowing again, coming down solid. He paused to let the giddiness settle in his head and then carried on, taking it a bit at a time.

  He stopped against the wall to catch his breath.

  Somehow he got the wall behind his back and he climbed his knees to get up. Oh, gawd! Another pause to let the giddiness settle. Then he checked out the bike.

  The wheels was okay but the handlebars was twisted.

  Another pause. Panting for breath.

  He tried to fix the handlebars but the pain in his right elbow stopped him. It was no good. The elbow was useless.

  Stay cool! Just hold on and fink about it!

  Single-handed, he opened up the saddlebag and found the wrench. He loosened the nut to make it easier to straighten the handlebars, then he put the wrench back in the saddlebag. Stop – take a breather! This here is a good bike – a lady’s Raleigh racer. He was glad now that it was a lady’s bike, because he wouldn’t have been able to get his leg over the bar of a man’s bike to mou
nt it. Once he did, and slung the backpack over his shoulders, he got half way onto the saddle, steadying the handlebars with his left hand. He didn’t know what to do with his right hand because it felt useless.

  Stop, look, listen!

  Oh, bollix! Oh, shit!

  The road was dangerous. You just didn’t go riding down a road what was dangerous.

  Got no choice!

  He grimaced with the effort of putting his right foot on the pedal. It was just a question of keeping the bike balanced when he took his left foot off the ground.

  You got to do it. You got to do it now for Penny.

  He looked up into the sky of falling snow, seeing the splotches land in his eyelashes. How was he going to figure this out?

  He tried lifting his left foot for a fraction of a second. The bike wobbled perilously. That useless elbow – that was the problem. He tried resting his right elbow on the top of the handlebar, but it just provoked an excruciating pain.

  Bleedin’ ’eck!

  That was when he sensed that something was watching him from the other side of the hedge behind the fog of falling snow. It was making its way towards him through the stubbled field. He could hear the clanking noise of it. Whatever was approaching, it sounded a bit like the clopping of a horse, only not the metallic hard clip-clop of hoofs, but more a heavy scraping sound . . . a sound more like the grinding of iron on stone . . . or maybe claws.

  Oh, gawd ’elp us!

  Whatever it was, the shadow of it, which was all he could make out, was big. It was huge. It was clanking towards where he was straddling the wobbly bike. He heard a strange sound: like it was sniffing at the snowy air.

  Sniffing!

  Penny would sometimes talk about predators. ‘You and me, Gully – we live in a world where eagles prey on lambs. Here we’re the lambs. The lambs must be cleverer than the eagles.’

  Never mind that – run!

  He dropped the bike and heard it clatter against the lane. In his mind, everything became slow-motion and the passing of every second felt like minutes. His right eye was so swollen he couldn’t open the lid. Still, he had his left one and he could glimpse the size of his pursuer more clearly now. He could hear it breathing, like some kind of an asthmatic T Rex. It was crazy even to think such a thing, but there was a monster coming after him. He was holding his injured right elbow in his left hand while still hobbling down the lane. He knew, in his pounding heart, that the last thing he ought to do was to look behind him.