Dead Kelly (The Afterblight Chronicles) Page 8

  McGuire followed Spider’s gaze to the seating and saw a figure rising, clutching something to her breast. The girl—little more than a child herself—made her way down from the platform, occasionally assisted by the audience, until she reached the centre of the Chamber. She gingerly stepped over the gully, presenting herself to Spider with a curtsy. Spider smiled a crooked half-smile, which McGuire imagined was supposed to be benevolent, but which just looked deeply sinister. Then Frieda approached McGuire. In her hands, wrapped in a piece of cheesecloth, was a newborn baby, probably a few days old. Presumably it was the one McGuire had heard crying as they entered the Chamber. He looked to the teenage girl, unable to disguise his bafflement, and she shyly returned his look and smiled. She very carefully lifted the cheesecloth aside so that he could see the baby’s auburn hair.

  McGuire stepped back from Frieda and the baby in shock, almost backing straight into Nancy’s cleaver.

  The sickly semi-grin was still on Spider’s face. “What do you think, Kelly?” he enquired mildly.

  “It’s mine,” McGuire whispered.

  Spider flourished a withered hand. “Hmm. Hard to say.”

  McGuire rounded on the man in the wheelchair. “Of course it’s fucking mine. I’ve only been gone eight months, mate. Your brain isn’t that fucking addled.”

  Spider nodded. “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m misremembering. Or maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t quite so committed to your relationship as you like to think.” He smirked. “I am Spider, after all. You know my reputation.”

  “Fucker,” McGuire growled, his body tensing, stopping only as Baxter gripped his arm. Baxter nodded toward Nancy the Nun, right behind McGuire, her meat cleaver poised.

  Spider, meanwhile, continued to speak. “Could be yours, couldn’t it? But then again... It could be mine. The problem is...”—he licked his thin lips—“you just can’t be certain.”

  McGuire was quiet a moment. “A boy or a girl?” he said at length.

  “A boy,” nodded Spider. “I know what you’re thinking, Kelly. I know you too bloody well. Sure, you want to be in command, you want to displace Trex and fuck the military and take over the city. Maybe even the whole fucking country. Sure, you want the power, the glory, the drugs, the pleasure.” Spider’s watery eyes wandered about the Chamber. “But most of all you want yourself a legacy, for your name to become the stuff of legend. And you think this baby boy will give you that, don’t you, Kelly?”

  “The baby’s mine,” said McGuire, blood trickling from his hand and onto the damp ground. “I know it.”

  “I’m glad you’re so fuckin’ certain. The thing is, I’m dying. I’d quite like a legacy too, as it goes.” He beamed at McGuire.

  “Fuck you.”

  Spider sneered and made a jerky gesture with his hand. McGuire was suddenly aware of a dozen or so submachine guns and pistols pointing directly at him. Spider shifted awkwardly in his wheelchair. “You can’t take him unless you kill me. And if you kill me, my people will kill you. What are we gonna do, eh?”

  McGuire looked to the people on the seats, to the few gang members he recognised, the ones he didn’t. The civilians who’d joined up with Spider’s gang just to survive. They all looked exhausted, many of them afraid. And still they looked expectant.

  McGuire nodded slowly. “I don’t think so, Spider,” he said at length, and in measured tones. “Trex sees you as an irritant, you know that? But you’re not even that. You’re a useless pile of skin and bone. And this place, your lair—this isn’t a headquarters. This is a hole, where a Spider crawls away to die.”

  “You fuckin’ idiot, McGuire. You’ve got no idea the power I wield. I saved these people from oblivion.” He pushed on one of the chair’s wheels and spun about. “Barbara!” he called suddenly, his scratchy words echoing off the brick walls.

  “Here,” said a portly woman in her sixties, shotgun quivering in her red, peeling hands.

  “What were you doing when I found you?”

  “Eating out of a bin, Spider!”

  Spider nodded, spinning his wheelchair around. “And you, Sam Mei—what were you doing?”

  A young Chinese man responded, “I’d been arrested by the military for looting, Spider.” He was holding a pistol on McGuire, sideways, like something out of a fuckin’ Tarantino flick.

  Spider smiled grimly at the memory. “And what were they going to do to you?”

  “Shoot me, Spider.”

  Spider nodded his understanding. “And what did I do?”

  “You sprang me, Spider. You saved my life”—he clutched the hand of the girl beside him—“and my sister’s.”

  Spider wheeled around to address Nancy. “And you, what about you?” he said tenderly. “What were you doing when I found you, Nancy?”

  Nancy moved in front of McGuire, then wordlessly lifted her head. McGuire saw the serration across her throat and the neat stitching that had saved her life.

  “You see?” said Spider, rounding triumphantly on McGuire. “These people owe me their very existence.”

  “Some existence,” replied McGuire, his voice rising in volume to be heard by the crowd. “A half-life, hiding beneath the city?”

  “Nancy,” intoned Spider.

  She straightened to attention, meat cleaver glinting in the candlelight.

  “Spider,” she acknowledged. “You want me to cut ’im down to size?”

  “Oh, you’d love to do that, wouldn’t you, my dear? Chop-chop, eh?” Spider grinned. “But not this time, Nancy. No, I thought we might call on your Biblical expertise, my dear.”

  “What’re you up to, you fucker?” demanded McGuire. He waved his arms angrily at the Chamber. “What is all this shit?”

  “Come here, Frieda,” Spider instructed the girl, who reluctantly stepped forward. “Ah, the dear ickle baby,” he cooed, reaching out a gnarled, blood-stained hand to caress the bundle. Abruptly he looked back to Nancy, staring intently at the meat cleaver and licking his lips. “You see the problem, dear Nancy. We can’t decide who should have the baby. Should it be Mr McGuire here or myself?”

  Nancy blinked. “Yes,” she said simply, “I see the problem.”

  “What would be the best way of deciding, do you think? Or is there a way of satisfying both parties?”

  Nancy frowned, and wiped her mouth with her free hand. “I don’t...”

  “King Solomon,” admonished Spider. “Don’t tell me that your religious indoctrination has left you completely, my dear? That would be disappointing.”

  Nancy gazed at the enormous blade in her hand.

  “You remember,” said Spider, delighted. “A compromise solution, intended to satisfy all parties?”

  “Nancy,” said McGuire urgently, “he’s fuckin’ insane. You’re not. You don’t need to do this.” His eyes darted back and forth to the audience. A dozen or so guns were still trained on him, but he could swear some were beginning to waver.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” hissed Spider. “Nancy here has cut more people than you can fuckin’ imagine. She’s even cut herself, for fuck’s sake.” He giggled, wheezy and high-pitched. “What difference is one more little fuckin’ child going to make?”

  “Yeah, you know the Biblicalstory,” growled McGuire, this time to Nancy. “And you know your own story. Why don’t you remember that instead?”

  Spider let out a shrieking giggle, “Ooh, that’s underhand. It really is.” He tugged hard on one of the wheels of his chair, rounding on Nancy. “Slice the fuckin’ baby in half. Now.”

  Nancy blinked. “No,” she said.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” responded Spider furiously. “I’m fuckin’ telling you to do it. I saved you, you owe me.”

  “No,” repeated Nancy, staring at Frieda and the baby.

  “Fuck you,” spat Spider. “You’ve done much worse. Remember those things. All the blood and suffering you’ve caused with your mighty fuckin’ blade.”

  “Not to children,” said Nancy woodenly. She had
lowered her blade. “Not to children.”

  “You fuckin’ bitch!” bellowed Spider, leaping from his wheelchair. He grabbed for the meat cleaver, but his ruined body was too weak to reach it. He fell awkwardly at Nancy’s feet and writhed on the floor, wailing brokenly in agony and rage, the most his atrophied lungs could evidently manage.

  McGuire flashed a look at Baxter, who nodded at him.

  “Listen to me,” said McGuire suddenly and urgently, raising his voice so that the whole Chamber could hear him above Spider’s yowling. “Is this the world you want? Where fucked-up monsters try to take the lives of innocents?” Spider’s people exchanged looks. Many of the guns were pointed away now. This, it seemed, was the audience’s expectation: they wanted him, McGuire, to release them from Spider’s web.

  He pointed at Spider, scrabbling helplessly in a heap on the floor. “Your leader—this sick fuck—is dying. That he’s lasted this long is a tribute to his tenacity, to his bull-headedness, fuckin’ whatever. But you lot—what are you doing? Skulking down here, living half-lives in the gloom and filth, occasionally sneaking up into the daylight to scavenge for food and drink, taking the occasional pot-shot at Trex’s people?” He heard whispering from various corners of the Chamber, and watched as still more of the guns were lowered.

  “He’s fuckin’ insane!” yelled Spider, his body twisting with the effort of calling out.

  McGuire ignored him, continuing his address to the Chamber. “Listen to me. There’s a world up there, and it’s new born. It’s unformed, undecided, full of potential.” He paused, eyes scanning the rapt audience, milking the opportunity for all its worth. “Spider’s time is at an end and he knows it. You can’t skulk down here anymore. If you join me, we can make this world afresh.”

  An echoing silence descended, broken only by the steady drip-drip of water and by a gentle pitter-patter from outside. The rain had begun. Even Spider’s sporadic wailing had subsided to nothing. The group continued to gaze at McGuire, all of their weapons now lowered. He saw in their eyes relief, but also uncertainty.

  McGuire’s nostrils flared, and he smiled broadly at the assembled mass. “You must go up,” he proclaimed.

  The dripping water was coming faster. Suddenly one of the crowd—Barbara, the large woman—broke away from the mass, beckoning emphatically to her companions. Then someone else did the same, and then another, and another. Abruptly the Chamber erupted into a flurry of activity, individuals making their way down from the seating, heading back along the tunnel, or for the exit in the far wall.

  McGuire turned away, satisfied. Nancy was watching him, a stunned expression on her face.

  “You know the Cathedral?” he said. “Trex’s compound?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, “I do.”

  “Come there in three hours. Say you’re with me.”

  Nancy looked at him in initial confusion, but slowly nodded. “Okay.” And with this, she turned on her heel, stepping over Spider’s prostrate form and heading up the tunnel, away from the Chamber, bloodied meat cleaver dangling from her hand.

  By now the Chamber had largely cleared of people. Frieda stood, wide-eyed and watching, the baby in the crook of her arm, uncertain what to do. McGuire dropped beside the figure of Lindsay, clutching her by the hand. It was clammy. He gently caressed her hair, her head lolling into his strokes.

  “Can’t be...” he heard her mutter.

  McGuire looked to Baxter. “She needs medical care.”

  “Boss?”

  McGuire spoke urgently. “Listen. Enough of Baxter the go-between. For the time being you need to choose sides. I need a squire.”

  “What, Boss?”

  “You know, like in days of yore.”

  Baxter blinked. “Oh, a squire, Boss.”

  “Yeah, you fucker. A helper. You capiche?”

  “Yeah.” Baxter nodded slowly. “Yeah, I got you.”

  McGuire nodded, moving to the back of the wheelchair. He released the brake. “Good. Take the baby.”

  “Boss?”

  “The baby,” urged McGuire.

  Baxter stepped forward, and Frieda pulled away, but then she fixed on Baxter’s intent face. He nodded and she allowed him to carefully extract the infant, cooing as he did so. Pausing only for a final, longing look, Frieda disappeared through the exit in the far wall of the Chamber.

  “We’ll take them to the cathedral. They’ll have a doctor there.”

  “You fucker,” hissed Spider. He was sobbing silently and rolling back and forth on the floor, arms and legs waving, unable to right himself. Tears were rolling down his face. “They don’t know you. They don’t what you’re capable of.”

  “They’ll find out soon enough,” snapped McGuire, wheeling Lindsay past him.

  “But Boss,” said Baxter, hurrying after him, the baby resting in the crook of his massive, muscled arm. He gestured back to Spider, at his quivering body. “What about the deal with Trex? You were meant to kill Spider. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

  McGuire looked around the echoing, empty Chamber, felt the moisture in the air on his face. Through the cracks in the far wall he could see the rain falling ever more heavily. The water in the gully had already begun to rise. Soon the Chamber would be flooded.

  “I think someone’s gonna get himself flushed down the fuckin’ plughole,” he said. “What d’you reckon?” Without waiting for an answer, he began wheeling Lindsay down the tunnel and toward the light. Baxter followed, the child cradled in his arms.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “WHAT THE FUCK are they doing?” he asked, pulling up his fly as he emerged from the bushes.

  Lindsay grinned. “Probably playing sandcastles. Boys will be boys.”

  McGuire snorted in agreement. He could see Trex, Ritzo and some of the others in the distance, swigging on beers, a few of the girls gyrating to some sort of heavy metal. Their bikes were parked on the rocky outcrop above.

  “Forget ’em, Kelly. We don’t need ’em.”

  McGuire nodded absently. He lowered himself back onto the sand and leaned on his elbows, gazing out toward the Bass Strait. Cobalt blue waves rose majestically before crashing into frothing nothingness on the shoreline.

  “What is it, hon?” Lindsay shifted onto her side and gazed at him, head propped on her hand. Much of her auburn hair was tucked under a headscarf she’d fashioned from one of his bandanas, her emerald eyes hidden behind a huge pair of sunnies. Earlier he’d helped lather her porcelain skin with sun block. A person of her rarefied complexion couldn’t outstay her welcome on Bells Beach.

  He stared at her, remembering the first time he’d seen her from astride his Harley. The gaggle of high school girls were headed for St Magdalene’s, chattering and giggling and throwing him and his gang furtive glances. All apart from her. She’d kept her head down, the faint blush on those pale cheeks only making her more alluring. It had been easy to begin an affair, harder to keep it secret from her friends and inevitably her family. He didn’t give a fuck about that, felt no guilt that he’d corrupted her. Her beauty would never survive the suburban marriage and motherhood her family had planned for her. No stiff of a man with a business suit and a dull job would cherish her like McGuire would. With him, her beauty would never fade, because he would make people see it.

  When her relationship with a gang member was exposed, her parents threatened to cut her off. It wasn’t a threat that was ever liable to work. She loved him as he much as he loved her. ‘Infatuation,’ her parents called it, but they could go fuck themselves, a sentiment he expressed to them repeatedly as he and his gang smashed their delightful, cosy home to kingdom come. Five years later and she hadn’t so much as breathed a word about her parents or her old life. They were gone; not even forgotten, but erased. Lindsay would always be with him. To all intents and purposes she always had been with him.

  She handed the spliff over with an inquiring look. “Everything’s fine,” he said, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs. “Everything.
”

  “Uh-huh,” she nodded, one eyebrow curling sceptically. “What next, then?”

  McGuire paused before replying, the roiling surf filling their silence. “I’ve got an idea for a raid.”

  “Tell me.” She smiled dreamily, pulling the sunnies away from those startling eyes.

  “A big one. An airport.” He took an extended pull on the joint, watching it flare and subside.

  “Sounds peachy.”

  Pot smoke billowed from his half-open mouth. “Uh-huh. The clever bit is the bulldozer.” He smiled, more to himself than anything. “Wait for them to load the plane, then smash it with a bulldozer.” He illustrated the plan by crashing his fist into the palm of his other hand. “I fucking love bulldozers.”

  Lindsay let her hand play on his bare chest, curling his hair. “Awesome.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed. “It’ll be fucking beautiful. Just as long as...”

  Her brow furrowed. “Just as long as what?” Her hand had flattened on his chest, unmoving, rising and falling with his breathing.

  “Forget it,” said McGuire, turning and smiling at her. He mashed the spent spliff into the sand. “I told you. Everything’s fine.”

  She cocked her head. “You’re sure?”

  “Don’t worry,” he smiled. “It’s nothing I can put my finger on.” He lifted his hand to his forehead in mock salute. “Scout’s fuckin’ honour.”

  “You could put your finger on me,” she said winsomely, flashing him a grin. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.

  This one time it was different. This one time, everything worked as it should. Perhaps it was the roar of the ocean or the feel of the sun on their naked skin, but this time she didn’t seem to mind the deformity, and he didn’t feel ashamed. For the first time ever he felt the thing she had inserted for him—as a sign of her devotion—with something other than his hands or his tongue. The golden stud that only he and she would ever know about it. A symbol of their love, hidden from view. Only the two of them knew she had mutilated her innermost body for him. Only the two of them knew why.