Authors: Oliver EADE
***
Out of the
blue, one morning after breakfast, the warden told Beetie her preparatory
lessons were to start. She was holding something in a tightly-closed fist.
“What do you
mean?” the girl asked, eyeing the woman’s hand with suspicion.
“Precisely
that, girl, though if I had
my
way it’d be another visit to the grey
block instead!”
Nothing could
make Beetie enter the building again. She still had nightmares about the place.
“Preparatory
for what?”
“For going
away. The Chairman said nothing more. Wants you properly dressed in your
special white, blue and gold dress, face presentable (the warden’s way of
warning Beetie to apply modest make-up) and ready and sitting in your chair in
twenty minutes. Also…” She opened out her palm and Beetie screamed.
“NO! NO!”
“Oh yes, yes!
Otherwise I’ll take you straight to the grey block. This time you mightn’t come
out as pretty little Belinda!”
Beetie closed
her eyes whilst the smirking warden held her arm straight and stuck the syringe
needle into a vein. She had a terror of needles not far short of her fear of
the grey block. Although she’d no recollection of the details of those repeated
needlings, the dread remained; dread of the awful vacuum which had almost
obliterated the boy and which came from those needles. What they injected into
her body over and over had clouded her mind and forced her to desire ever more
things from the skull-faced beast who played with her like a puppet from the
computer screen. Could her worst fear come true... would the boy soon be gone
forever?
The warden
left Beetie to dress and make herself beautiful with an array of toiletries. All
the time, struggling to fight off the effects of the injection, she held on to
a vision of the boy; she begged him to speak inside her head and repeat to her
those words of poetry she’d heard from the Chairman, some of which she had
committed to her fading memory. A false mellow happiness overwhelmed her… a
result of the injection. She became quite elated, but, strangely, this time the
boy inside her became
stronger
,
not weaker. He was far from
disappearing! She got so desperate for him to be with her, to hold her and oh,
to kiss her lips again, she closed her eyes and traced the imagined contours of
his face. Using a finger she wrote ‘G-A-R-Y’ in the air then giggled.
A little more eye shadow… just for
Gary
?
On the
warden’s return, Beetie was sitting dutifully in the chair in front of the
computer screen.
“Anything to
tell me, girl?” asked the warden.
“Oh… like I
want to hug the whole world!” the girl tittered.
“Hmmm! Might
be enough! Anything else?”
“I... I want…
um…” Beetie put her hands on her knees, gazed upwards, starry eyed, and
replied, “I want
him
to touch me a-a-a-all over! I want… I
wish
…
oh, if
only
everything would come true!”
“The
Chairman?”
“Aaaaah!”
Beetie let out a long, doleful sigh. “Him! Oh him, him, him!”
“I wonder! No
time to give you another shot, anyway. He’s here!”
The computer
screen flickered into action, and Teeth appeared, his face stony-grave.
“Are you ready
for your preparatory lesson, Belinda?”
“Oh, yes,
yes...
yes
!
Please
! I can’t wait any longer!”
She smiled
prettily for the Chairman, and her smile was made strong by thoughts of a boy
from the past whose image grew more real by the minute; a face now curiously
solid inside her head. Beetie was as much the boy as she was herself. Together
they were prepared for anything… including her first lesson.
“One step closer and you’re a
frozen duck!”
Mike edged
towards Blinker, his mag-stunner aimed at the other boy. Like a terrier, he’d
defend his friend to the death. Being outnumbered, their situation was
hopeless, although Gary did wonder
why they hadn’t already both been zapped or speared. Standing defiantly beside Gary
still sprawled out on the ground, Mike challenged Blinker.
“Leave us
alone, can’t you?” Blinker remained silent, a faceless shadow against the
bright yellow light. “You lot have your stupid bloody prehistoric tablet… and a
fat lot of thanks I got for all the work I put in getting the damn thing for
you. Risked a bloody detention centre, even! Why can’t you let us flipping get
on with our lives in the past now?”
Blinker spoke:
“So Redfor’s
back in your place seeking out the real God?”
“I don’t get
it!” Gary said, painfully picking
himself up. Mike put his hand out to help his friend. “Just kill us and be done
with it... but bloody let Beetie go free!”
“You left
Redfor in the past to help God out, right?”
“What are you
on about, you bastard?” Gary asked
tetchily. “Not sure I believe in your other God, anyway.
The
bearded man.
Just tell me one thing…” He paused, narrowing his eyes to
take in the features of the boy from the future. How he wanted to kill him as
that last fleeting image of Beetie’s frightened face flashed across his mind.
“Beetie... why?
Tell me why!” he demanded.
“It was all
planned,” answered Blinker. “Between her and me.”
Gary
staggered to within punching distance of the boy from the future to see his
face better.
“What are you
talking about? She hated you.”
“Yes… and no.
We fell out a lot, sure, but we were a team. Working for the
real
God.”
“
Which
God?” Gary tightened his fist. He
reckoned the other boy’s chin would make a perfect target.
Knock his
head backwards… hard enough for it to bloody fall off
?
“Gary,
you
of
all people should know we’ve only one God! Problem is can we trust Redfor?”
“Hang on! You
said you’d planned this whole thing with Beetie... then had her carted off to
the Hatcheries trussed up in a bloody net?”
“She was gonna
be sent there anyway. I found a way of intercepting Arthry’s tele-messages when
we began to suspect him. She had to get there first… find out things… and
you
were supposed to rescue her, you dumb fool!”
“Wait a
minute! You two
suspected Arthry? Of working for the Agenda? That’s not
what Beetie told me!
She
had doubts about
you
… and as far as I’m
concerned she’s been proved correct.”
“You’ve no
idea what’s going on!”
“Did you touch
her? Kiss her… or… or do things with her in that little cell?”
The thought of
anyone else making love to Beetie was unbearable.
“
Kiss
?
Never heard of the word!”
“Don’t play
games, you bastard! Were you and she lovers?”
Mike grabbed
his friend’s arm. He was only too familiar with Gary’s
outbursts of temper.
“Cool it, Gary!”
he cautioned.
“Beetie and I
work for God,” continued Blinker. “But only I have
actually
met him
since we came from the Hatcheries.”
“Describe the
real God!”
“Like you told
Arthry. White hair and a long beard. He understands how important Beetie is to
The Agenda…
and
to us. He can’t stop them by himself. They’d destroy him
and everyone else if he tried. As for Beetie and me being lovers, if you mean
‘coming together’… impossible! Shows how little you know about this place.
We’re from the same Hatchery. Brother and sister, but never lovers!”
“Promise?”
Gary
relaxed his fist... slightly.
“All to do
with what happened in the Hatcheries before we got let out, I guess. The way we
were re-programmed. Gary, we both
care so much about the world.
And
London
.”
Blinker’s face, being in shadow, was unreadable although the nervous twitch was
visible. “Now that they’ve got the Pentatron Tablet, thanks to you, the
Chairman’ll soon be taking Beetie on to the Terminus.
With
those other girls imprisoned in the Hatcheries.
Well and truly messed
things up, haven’t you!”
“Hang on...
you
let them cart Beetie back to the Hatcheries then you blame me?” He was still
haunted by an image of Beetie struggling in that net... and of Blinker’s
laughter.
“Not so much
‘let’. Couldn’t stop the girl from following this through. Beetie understood
the risks but was passionate about saving our species.”
“You’re lying!
We’d planned for her to come back in time with me. After nicking the other
time-specs. We were gonna track down God together and… hey, what…?”
Beefor was
chuckling. Gary’s fist tightened
again.
“I kinda doubt
he
would
ever want to meet up with
you
. Anyway, we haven’t
much time left ’cos you’ve gone and given Arthry and the Chairman the tablet.
I’d planned to hold on to the thing myself… for God.”
“Who the heck
is the Chairman?”
“In there with
Arthry. The Agenda boss… Arthry’s too, it seems. The
other
God. The man
the
real
God thought might one day help him protect London
but who seems to want to destroy everything to save
himself
and a chosen few.”
“Including
Beetie?”
“The Chairman
and Arthry call her ‘Belinda’ now.”
“
Belinda
?”
“Uhuh! It’s
complicated, but
our
God thinks only
she
can stop this from
happening. ’Cos she’s special. Why God seemed so sure you could save the rest
of us by helping her I can’t figure out, but I’ll say one thing… you’re
persistent!”
Gary
didn’t like what he heard.
Beetie one of the chosen few?
Chosen for what
…
and as ‘Belinda’
? He sensed his temper edge
towards the touch line.
“Okay then!
I’ll go back into the Retreat and kick the shit out of Teeth and Arthry until
they tell me what’s happening.”
Mike’s hand
had tightened around Gary’s arm.
Blinker laughed.
“You’d become
gee-rat food! Knowing the Chairman, the process would be slow and painful. One
of his main pleasures is to watch others suffer. He’d have you witness the rats
eat each of your limbs one by one before throwing them the rest of your
carcass. In fact, he sent
me
to fetch you and bring you back alive.”
Was Blinker
playing with him after all?
“And will
you?”
“Believe what
you like, Gary, but you’d do better getting to
her
now they have the
Pentatron tablet. You should’ve given the thing to me like I’d planned with God
and Redfor. At least Arthry thinks I’m with The Agenda. I’ll keep the pretence
up… but they’ll have hidden the tablet. Only you getting to Beetie can stall
the monsters.”
“By
shuttle-bus?”
“No! From the
past! Don’t you learn anything?”
“St
John’s Wood… in the other direction?” suggested Mike.
“Afterwards, Jubilee line to Stanmore?”
Gary
scanned the slumped hump-shadows of gee-rats.
“They’re not
moving. It’s gone three minutes and they’re not recovering,” he said. “Why
not?”
“Oh, I have my
friends,” replied Blinker.
The two men
behind Blinker held up spears tipped red with blood.
“They’ve been
busy whilst we were talking! There’s more where these creatures came from,
though, so I guess Mike’s right. Go the other way. Hurry! We can only hold them
back for so long.”
Mike turned to
head off into the tunnel, but Gary
hesitated and stared at the dark figure of Blinker.
“Why?” he
asked. “Why put yourself at risk when you too could become one of the chosen
few?”
The silhouette
chuckled.
“If you were
to meet the
real
God you’d understand why, but you never will.”
Without a
further word, Gary and Mike turned and ran on into the blackness, away from the
light, the dead rats, Blinker and his friends.
“You okay,
Gary?” asked Mike. “Not giving your face much chance to recover, are we?”
Gary
couldn’t care about his stupid face. All he wanted was to get to St
John’s Wood, onto the tube and…
Oh shit
…
what then?
***
Beetie fought
against the urge to vomit. The things she’d been shown during her preparatory
lesson were even more revolting than what she’d witnessed in the grey building,
but no way could she show her abhorrence. To protect the boy called ‘Gary’,
she faked delight at the awfulness of what the Chairman said he’d do to her,
secretly clinging to a longing to be hugged, caressed and kissed by the boy...
and
only
the boy! Her increasing revulsion against the Chairman
strengthened the yearning to be with Gary…
and be protected by him. She knew her one chance to achieve this was to lead
the grotesque little man along a path of deception:
“Oh, Chairman, how wonderful!
I simply can’t wait. When will
this happen?”
“Belinda, my
dearest, we’re now almost ready. I’ll escort you through to the Terminus myself
as soon as we’re sure everything’s working. You’ve no idea how wonderful this
is going to be. Those things you’ve seen, they’re as nothing compared with the
reality of it all.”
The girl could
barely hold on to her forced smile as she stared at the Chairman’s loathsome
grin, but she refused to let her eyes betray her inner secret.
“Oh let it be
soon, Chairman,
please
! And I don’t think I need any more preparatory
lessons.”
“The
next
lesson will be for real, Belinda. Here in the Terminus.”
The
Terminus
?
There had to be some other significance to the word.
Terminus...Terminus...
she
repeated over and over to herself. Suspended somewhere in that vacuum created
by the warden’s needles were ghosts of memories; none as tangible as the face
of the boy from the past, but they were there...forgotten reasons for her to be
in this beautiful place other than suffer torment as the Chairman’s plaything.
The word ‘Terminus’ had something to do with the purpose of her presence in a
false paradise. Perhaps the boy inside her would help her uncover the past as
he’d helped to prevent her breaking down in the face of the Chairman’s
revolting ‘lesson’. Surely
he
would know why she feared the Terminus so,
despite all those pictures showing this to be a place of unbelievable
splendour. She would rely on the mysterious boy in her head to quell her fears
when the Chairman came for her. Gary
would protect her from the evil that
awaited
.
***
“How far from
“Dunno. A
mile… mile and a half? Difficult to tell on a tube train and never walked the
tunnels before. I’ve been thinking, pal… perhaps we ought to… sort of … you
know... via the hockey pitch?”
“Bloody no,
Mike!
Only
when we’ve got Beetie out of this mess. Afterwards you and
that redhead can do what you flaming like. Go and live in a tent on the
bleeding hockey pitch for all I care.”
“Okay! Don’t
get your futuristic knickers in a twist!”
“Priorities,
Mike! Right?”
“Sure… but
this future won’t have happened yet... then!”
“Priorities
(pant, pant)... okay (pant)?”
Gary,
the less fit of the two, was having difficulty running and talking at the same
time, whereas for Mike jogging without delivering an incessant monologue was virtually
impossible.
“Think I’ll
ask her out to the flicks, Gary. A
little gift for helping me
save
the world.
For being the chosen one.
I’ve still got her hairgrip.
Gotta hand it back some time.
Not a proper thief, ay?” Mike
turned and winked at his friend who only grunted. “As you say, Gary…
strike
whilst the iron’s hot! Think she’d like Sci-Fi,
chick-flick, or what?
Horror perhaps?
I’ve heard some
girls get pretty turned on by the gory stuff.”
Mike’s verbal
diarrhoea continued as he ran on effortlessly in the dark tunnel to an
accompaniment of puffs and groans from his friend. A pinhole of feeble light
ahead steadily grew...
Likewise, a
horribly familiar chattering sound behind them…
“I thought he
said they’d bloody killed ’em!” exclaimed Mike, increasing his speed and
pulling ahead.
Gary’s
legs wouldn’t move faster. The rat-chatter swelled in the void behind. The
hungry rodents would soon catch up and the tunnel entrance was at least a
hundred yards away. Without Blinker’s protection those huge teeth would make
quick work of him.
“THINK… I’LL…
CHOOSE… THE TRAIN... MIKE!” he called out.
“KEEP … TO THE SIDE...
SPECS
OFF!”
He didn’t wait
for Mike to reply. Against a surge of terrifying chatter-chatter, he slipped
off the time-specs. The tunnel and the darkness were the same, but, thank God,
the noise had stopped, the only the sound being his shoes on the ground as he
stumbled on, now avoiding live rails.
“MIKE!”
No reply.
“MIKE!
WHERE THE HELL
ARE
YOU?”
Silence,
until... a different, albeit familiar sound: a low-pitched rumble.
Worse
than
gee-rats!