Always Forever (41 page)

Thinking about it made his head hurt. He wished Tom had given some directions. A Rough Guide of the Grim Lands, with a nice tourist map. Avoid this place,
especially after dark. You'll get a good welcome here. And here you'll find Shavi.

But he was on his own, as always. He went for the simplest option: keep
walking and something would turn up; then adjust your path accordingly. He
just wished that terrible feeling of something at his heels would go away.

The uneven terrain alternated between hard rock and shale. What he could
make out of the landscape was featureless, with no markers for his journey there
or back. Nor was there anything to judge the passage of time, so it was impossible to tell how soon after he entered the Grim Lands that he heard the noises.
At first it was like scratching, as if a dog were trying to claw something out from
beneath the shale. This came and went for a while, continuously matching his
progress, and then, gradually, it mutated into the sound of footsteps, echoing
near at hand, then far away, then disappearing completely. He had to accept
there was something out there and it was tracking him.

His hand went to his sword for comfort, though he knew it would be useless in that place. He tried not to get distracted; head down, keep going, a
mantra he repeated over and over.

And then, as if they had been commanded, the mists parted and a figure
emerged from them. It was a woman, her face blank, her skin a pallid grey, clad
in an ankle-length, colourless dress of some harsh material. Long blonde hair
hung limply around her face. Her head was held uncomfortably towards one
shoulder and she moved awkwardly, as if her limbs were not used to any activity.
She paused a few feet away from Veitch, swaying slightly.

"Hello?" he said tentatively. A beat had started to pulse deep in his brain.

Instead of turning her head, she inched her whole body round until she was
facing him. He expected to see some kind of terror, some severe intelligence in
her eyes, but they were cold and dead and that was even worse. Slowly, she beckoned for him to follow her.

For a second or two, Veitch hesitated as Tom's words briefly tapped a
warning: the dead hate the living. They were jealous and bitter. Yet he could see
no threat in her, and following her was preferable to wandering aimlessly; any
presence, however strange, was a respite from the awful sense of foreboding
gathering all around.

"I'm looking for someone." His voice, so vibrant and full of life, sounded
jarringly out of place. He modulated it so it sounded less expressive. "A friend."

She turned towards him with those eyes that showed no glimmer of
thought, gave nothing away, then shuffled back round silently and continued
slowly on her way.

"So, are you ignoring me? Or can you talk? Who knows what the bleedin'
rules are in this place?" He eased a little as the minutes passed without event
and slowly he warmed to the sound of his voice, like a flame in the deep, dark
night. "I hope this isn't a wild goose chase. For all I know, you've got no sense
left at all. You're just a shape or something. And I'm acting like a right twat
talking to you. No change there, then." He smiled to himself. "This isn't as bad
as I thought. The old bastard built it up into some big, bleedin' fright. Thought
I'd be fighting for my life the moment I crossed over here. And look at us.
Having a nice stroll. Shame about the scenery." He paused thoughtfully. "Still
better than Greenwich, though." His chuckle rolled out through the mists,
eventually coming back to him distorted into the growl of a wild beast.

They continued until the ground sloped downwards and became littered at
first with stones, and then with large boulders. Veitch had to pick his way
through them carefully, but the woman moved effortlessly, almost oblivious to
the obstacles.

"You really better not be taking me for a ride." He clambered over a rock
with lethal-looking fractured edges, as sharp as razors.

Beyond the rocks, passage became even steeper and it was necessary to take
a winding route down to avoid careering out of control. Veitch was disturbed to
realise his journey was like a distorted analogue of the landscape he had left
behind in the real world: the flat summit, the thickly forested rim, the sweeping
hillside; instead of lush vegetation there were only dead land and dead people.
He wasn't taken with many thoughts of reasoning or perception, but at that
moment one came to him that excited him with its novelty. Perhaps all the
words-T'ir n'a n'Og, the Grim Lands, and whatever lay beyond-were just
like his own world in layout, only altered to fit whatever rules of the place
abided. It was a big notion, and there were too many questions building up
behind it to consider it for too long, but he felt a remarkable sense of achievement that he had thought it in the first place.

As he made his way down the hillside, the mist cleared a little. What he saw
wasn't as disturbing as on the summit, but it still brought troubling questions.
At one juncture, he seemed to be looking out over London, only it was transformed by shadows shifting along the streets with a life of their own. Later he
saw a Spitfire sweeping across the sky, and then a tribe of fierce men and women
in furs and leather.

And in one particularly upsetting moment, he even saw himself, or thought he did, but it was so fleeting he couldn't be sure. Yet in that half moment, he
was overcome with a consuming horror. The expression he saw on his face had
the look of a man who had peered into the depths of Hell and saw it was even
worse than he could possibly imagine; broken, filled with despair, and more, an
almost inhuman self-loathing. It made him sick to his stomach at the thought
of what that vision meant, but try as he might, he couldn't put it out of his head.

It troubled him enough to lose his common sense briefly. Suddenly overcome by doubt that his guide was taking him no closer to Shavi, he hurried forward and grabbed her arm. He regretted it instantly. The flesh felt as dry and
lifeless as sandpaper. At his touch, a tremor ran through the woman and she
turned once again to fix that blank gaze on him. Once more he tried to see some
meaning in those implacable eyes, but there was only a defiant idiocy there. He
retreated quickly and didn't speak to her again for the next half hour.

By then his thoughts had started to move on to more questions about his
surroundings. Did all the dead stay in that place? If so, why was it so empty after
the long spread of human existence? Or was it like a waiting room before the
departed moved on to somewhere else?

"Maybe this is it, just you and me, and everyone else has already passed on,"
he mused. "The only living boy in the Grim Lands and his dead girlfriend."

"Oh, there are more." He jerked in shock at the sound of her voice, like a
file on metal.

"You can talk." All his carefully constructed conceptions were shifting
under his feet. His mind raced to get back on track; he was thinking, If she can
talk, what else can she do? but by then it was too late.

The remaining mist swept away, although he could not feel any breeze. It
was an eerie sight, billowing across the bleak landscape like a reversed film. As
it did so, she was turning to face him once again, only this time she was fundamentally changed. Her posture had become more upright, but it was most evident in her eyes, no longer dead, no longer stupid.

He thought: She tricked nze.

The tinge of a cruel smile appeared. "Welcome to the Grey Lands. May you
never leave."

She made an expansive gesture. Hesitantly, he turned to look, although
every fibre of him was screaming that he didn't want to see.

They were behind him. Dead people, as far as the eye could see, line upon
line, column upon column, stretched across the grey stone land beneath the grey
sky. Figures leeched of colour, of expression, of body language, bereft of life in
all its signifiers. But not bereft of emotion. Although their faces were impassive,
he could see it in their hateful eyes. A thousand, thousand unblinking stares radiating darkness, silently roaring that they wanted to tear him limb from
limb; to punish him for the crime of living. The planetary weight of their gaze
made him feel sick.

As he scanned them slowly, he began to understand. Here were the ones
who had not yet moved on, but also the ones who could not move on; those
trapped by hatred or fear or shock. He came across the face of Ruth's uncle,
whom he had shot down in cold blood, and felt a terrible, crushing guilt. To
understand the awful repercussions of the murder had been traumatic enough,
but to be faced with the cold, accusing eyes of his victim was infinitely worse.
He quickly looked away, knowing he would never forget what he had seen in
that face. But there were others he had seen slain during the long, hard days of
his youth, when he first started to move with the wrong kind. The ones nearest
were unknown to him, but he could still read the harshness of their existence in
the lines on their faces, the sour turn of their mouths.

It was a strange, hanging moment of complete silence; he was looking up
at a tidal wave the instant before it crashed down. And then they moved.

Veitch launched himself across the rocky ground as the wave broke. In the
instant of his turning he had glimpsed them all shifting as one, a single grey
beast of hatred and retribution bearing down on him with outstretched arms,
wide, staring eyes and silently screaming mouths. A million dead, hunting. If
he survived, he knew it was a sight that would haunt him for as long as he lived.

As he passed the treacherous spirit that had guided him to that spot, she
spat like a wildcat and lashed out with sharp nails that raked open the side of
his face. Without breaking his stride, he cursed and returned the blow with his
sword. Her bloodless arm fell to the ground.

The fear and adrenalin took conscious thought from his head. Instinctively
he recognised his only hope was to run faster and longer. But could the dead
tire? And he had already been pushed to his limits by the Night Rider.

The ground passed in a blur beneath his feet, the featureless, rocky landscape streamed on either side; he was locked into the beat of his heart, the surge
of his blood, the pump of his muscles. Through it all he could feel the weight
of them pressing at his back, just a hand's-width from him, constantly reaching.
One wrong step and they would have him.

And he ran.

The silence was the worst thing. His ears told him there was nothing there,
seductively teasing him to stop, but the primal part of him sensed them,
responded to them as his ancestors would have done. He had reached the foot of the hill, crossed the first two miles of a flat plain that reached to the horizon.
But he was starting to tire. The constant pounding on the hard rock sent spikes
of pain from his knees into his groin and a knot had formed in his gut. Fire was
creeping out in a web across his lungs.

He slowed, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough. Some fluttering thing
brushed the back of his jacket. He propelled himself forward to escape it, but he
didn't have the energy to maintain the spurt. When he slowed this time, the
touch on his jacket was as sharp as a knife. He pressed forward again. Stars burst
across his vision. Winding down, nearly over. A pinching sensation seared his
shoulder like red hot pokers. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling
from nearly contact.

He would never give up. Death or glory.

The rock fell away beneath his feet. For one frightening moment he was
pedalling thin air, and then he reconnected with the ground hard, skidding on
his heels down a pebbled scree slope, windmilling his arms to maintain his balance. Dark walls rushed up around him and shadows clustered far below. A fissure of some kind, invisible until he was upon it.

Gravity dragged him faster, barely able to keep his balance. A boulder leapt
out of nowhere, but he had no control of his momentum to avoid it. He clipped
it and did a forward roll in the air, crashing down on to the stones and shale,
twenty knives in his back, ripping his flesh. Faster and faster, the shadows
looming up, impossible to tell what dangers they hid. His head slammed
against the rocks and he lost consciousness for the briefest instant. He awakened
to realise the sucking shadows were close at hand. The force propelled him over
a rock ledge into the heart of them.

He awoke in so much pain he was convinced something bad was broken. Blood
slicked his clothes from a deep gash on his head and numerous other cuts across his
body. He wiped a puddle from his eye and loosed the splatter with a flick of his wrist.
Cautiously, he tested his limbs. Apart from a searing pain in his ribs, he appeared in
one piece; he guessed that was probably bad bruising rather than a break.

After the initial stupefaction, he came to awareness sharply, jumping to his
feet to flee his pursuers. He was alone on a flat stone floor. High overhead he
could see a sliver of grey sky and, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the shapes
of the dead moving down the walls of the fissure towards him.

Exhausted and brittle from the pain, he headed along the floor of the fissure
into the dark.