The Bitter End (24 page)
"How's he doing?" said Ben turning back to Martin and Alex.
"I'm fine," said Alex, at least that's what Ben thought he said. It came out as a series of gasps.
"Take him back," he said.
"What?" said Martin.
"You heard me," said Ben. "Take him back to camp, get him fixed up. You can help the others."
"I'm staying here," said Alex.
Ben shook his head. Somehow he knew that he had to fight Kirsty alone. It seemed like the only way it was going to work. Two teenage boys weren't going to be able to help him. "Do it now," he said.
Martin didn't argue. He pulled Alex back across the room towards the door. Ben watched them go and then turned to pull the arrow out of Nicholas's head.
18
The tunnels seemed endless. An age seemed to have passed since he had last seen daylight. It became difficult to keep his nerve, alone in the tunnels, if there had not been so much danger he might have whistled just to hear something other than the water crashing against the other side of the wall. Then that stopped as well and the only thing he could hear was his own feet coming down of the rocky floor.
He might have been miles underground. He had passed the cells they had been kept in the previous day. And he went on.
He couldn't explain how but he knew he was going the right way. He even had a vague sense of what he would find when he got there, though every time he tried to picture it the image fell to pieces.
There were bats down there. He could hear their occasional squeak in the darkness. There were flies that he had to brush away from his face. The ceiling got lower with each floor he passed and by the time he got to the bottom he was crawling on his hands and knees and wondering if he would have to crawl on his belly next.
But it opened up and he found he could stand without his head brushing uneven rock.
It was huge. A cavern. It was lit by invisible fluorescents in pink and green and white. The walls were more than a hundred metres apart and he couldn't see where the room ended on the other side. Perhaps it didn't.
He checked his weapons, counted the arrows in his quiver and went on.
It seemed as if he could see the curve of the earth in the floor. As he walked further into the room new things appeared, statues and structures, furniture and paintings on easels.
"Hello Ben," said a terribly familiar voice behind him.
He spun around and there she stood. Little Kirsty Lorimer but not so little anymore. Her skin was white and flawless. Her dark hair fell on her exposed shoulders. She wore a red ball gown that she filled in a way no thirteen year old girl should. Ben stepped back and raised his crossbow.
"You've come to kill me?" she said. Her voice was like velvet, a seductive voice that should have sounded funny coming from a little girl but didn't, it sounded scary.
Ben knew that he should have put an arrow through her head then but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. His head was swimming.
"I'm glad," she sighed.
"You're glad?" he said, suddenly aware that he was being hypnotised but unable to resist it. "Why are you glad?"
"I'm lonely Ben," she said. She shook her head and her silky hair brushed across her shoulders. "I thought Nicholas might be the one for me but he's dead now, isn't he?"
Ben nodded and tried not to apologise. He reminded himself that Nicholas had been dead for a long time, the thing he killed was something else. Just like the thing in front of him wasn't really Kirsty Lorimer. That seemed like a dangerous thought but it was there now and he couldn't unthink it.
"I suppose it's only right," she said. Her lips were full and painted, she ran her tongue across them and Ben saw them glisten.
"He was a monster," he said. It felt like choking on a piece of dry meat to say the words.
"I suppose I am a monster too?"
"N..." he clamped his mouth shut and refused to say the rest. "What are you doing to me?"
"Me? Am I doing something to you Ben?" She took a step towards him and for a moment he couldn't stop her, for a moment he didn't want to stop her.
"Stop it," he said and he wanted to push her away but he couldn't. Instead he stepped back but she just kept coming.
She stopped in front of him, her soft body pressed against his. He found that he couldn't move. He felt her leg touching his but he refused to look down, that at least he could manage. "You could stay with me," she said. "Keep me company."
A part of him wanted to tell her that no, he didn't want to stay with her, but another part realised that was a lie.
"We could have such good fun together you and I," she said. She moved her head towards his, her lips brushed against his ear. "Wouldn't you like that Ben?"
He reached for her waist, meaning to hold her close to him so that she could take him. Take his life with a bite to the neck that he welcomed. But when he touched her he found her cold. It was like holding a body that had been pulled from the river.
"You don't need your wife," she whispered, her mouth tracing kisses down his neck. Her cold lips and her cold body and he realised that he did, he did need Mary and he did need his boys.
He grabbed her waist hard and pushed her away.
She let out a squeal as she fell to the floor and the spell was broken. When he looked at her now he saw a dead girl who had been dressed in a funeral gown. Her skin was pale but blotchy, swollen as if she had been dragged from a watery death. Her eyes were sunken and her mouth a monsters hole full of teeth.
She also looked scared and that was the worst part of all.
Ben raised his crossbow. He said a prayer for her and then he pulled the trigger. She cried out in agony and surprise and before his eyes she changed.
He saw her whole life cycle, the one she would never have. She grew up and became beautiful, for a moment she was the woman he had imagined when he first arrived in the room. Then she was old but still beautiful in her way. Then she was ancient and crumbling and he could see her body rot before his eyes. She turned to ashes on the floor and then rose up from them as a terrible monstrous shape.
She cried out and the room shook. Rock fell from the ceiling onto the ground around him and he knew that if he didn't get out soon he would be buried alive, down here with her forever. Just as she had wanted.
He pulled out the gun from his pocket and fired at her. She writhed and lunged for him but he was already moving, running back the way he had come. He needed to get to Mary and the boys, he needed Mary and the boys like he never had before.
She came after him but the ceiling was crashing down on both of them now. He dodged falling rocks and turned back to fire his wooden bullets at her. Mostly he hit her. She ket coming, the heavy rocks crashing into her, knocking her from side to side.The door he had come through was in sight. He turned meaning to shoot her again, because if she followed him into the tunnels she would catch him, no question, but he found that he didn't need too.
It seemed like more of the ceiling was on the ground than above them and she was trapped. Screaming and scraping desperately at the floor but unable to move. He watched her try to change shape again but she couldn't. If she could have turned into smoke it might have saved her.
Ben walked back towards her, dodging falling rocks that were now letting in streams of water. He stood above her and prayed to a god that he had never believed in. He aimed for her heart and without a hint of regret he delivered the killing blow.
He would have stayed and watched. Would have waited for her body to return to child size and even taken it with him to return to her family with his deepest regrets. But there was no time: water was now filling the chamber and if he didn't get out now he would drown and be just as dead as she was.
Ben turned and started to run.
He scrambled through the tunnels, waded through the water that had already started to fill them and made it back to the bottom floor where the prison cells were. He didn't see anyone in the holes and made it to the door, breathless and wet but grateful to be alive.
The village couldn't be saved. Those who had been turned fell dead alongside their queen. A ceremony was held. Ben tried to remember his mother as she had been when he was younger, not as the woman who had been losing her mind and not as the woman who had handed him over to Nicholas.
The village couldn't be saved. The water had sunk into the tunnels built beneath the dam, the decaying boats had sunk to the exposed river bed. Using the Robinson Crusoe they saved what they could which was more than enough for the hundred survivors.
The village couldn't be saved. They made a new life together, boats on the river never staying anywhere for more than a single night.
Ben climbed on deck and saw Zack and Adam working the tiller between them. One reached up to move it while the other gave instructions for which way they should turn. Ben smiled at them and sat beside Mary.
She took his hand and smiled at him. The wind had made her cheeks red and he leaned towards her and kissed him. The village couldn't be saved but perhaps the world could.
THE END
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The Bitter End
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About the author
James Loscombe was born in Crawley in 1983 and now lives in Reading with his wife Tamzin and son Jude. He was first published in 2012. You can find out more about the author on his website at
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