99
The Traveller untangled his legs from Fegan’s, kicking the madman away. The Glock lay out of either man’s reach. He raised himself up. Fegan watched from under drooping eyelids. The Traveller coughed, then doubled over, vomiting up the blood he’d swallowed. His head seemed to float, lighter than the rest of him. He knew he didn’t have long, but he had to finish it. He had to see Fegan’s life end.
The ceiling was lost now above a canopy of roiling darkness. Currents of hot air ferried black motes past his eyes. The Traveller tasted the burning through the blood and bile in his mouth. He swung his right foot into Fegan’s groin. Fegan curled into a ball, his forearms across his stomach. The Traveller edged along the wall, using it for balance. When his feet were level with Fegan’s eyes, he kicked hard. Fegan rolled away, spitting blood and a tooth.
The bright and beautiful joy of it flared in the Traveller’s heart, sending waves of giddy happiness up to his brain. He stepped over Fegan’s body, ignoring the clutching hands as he tried to rise, and drove a heel into his upturned face. It connected with Fegan’s chin, and his body flopped back to the carpet.
Before he could follow the kick with another, a tidal wave through the centre of his brain sent the Traveller staggering sideways. His legs deserted him, and he landed on his side. He blinked, tried to clear his mind, but it was so hard, and he was so tired. Warmth enveloped him, pulled him down so his cheek rested on the carpet. His eyes closed for a few seconds, at first against his wishes, but soon he welcomed the darkness. It wouldn’t be so bad to sleep here, to just let his eyes stay closed, let the warmth take him.
No.
Warm, like a soft bed on a winter morning.
No.
As he drifted, he saw Sofia and her round hips, her soft thighs, her belly swollen with the baby he’d resolved to give her.
No.
His eyes snapped open as a thunderbolt of pain cracked behind them. He screamed against it, filled his lungs with the precious clean air near the floor, and coughed. A spray of blood marked the carpet. As his vision cleared he saw the Glock just inches from his fingers. With every bit of strength left to him, he reached for it, took it in his grasp.
The Traveller forced his body up until he sat with his back against the wall. Fegan stirred, his chest rising and falling, his hands reaching up to grab at whatever phantoms circled him. The Traveller raised the Glock and blinked hard as he tried to align the sight on Fegan’s head.
He drew in the clean air and held it in his lungs as he struggled to his feet. His legs quivered, but the wall held him upright until the Glock picked out a point between Fegan’s distant eyes.
The Traveller’s finger tightened on the trigger, but a voice called to him from somewhere far away.
‘What?’
The word emptied his lungs, forcing him to breathe the tainted air. His head immediately lightened, and he searched around him for the source of the intrusion.
There, by the door, the shape of a man, his blond hair blackened and burnt, pointing back at him. No, not pointing, aiming something—
Two hard punches to his shoulder, one after the other, and the floor slammed into his back. The ceiling looked like a churning river of black. Everywhere was silence, save for the faintest whistling in his ears. He tried to breathe in, but his lungs would not obey. His hands would not move to his chest to remove the weight and heat that had settled there.
100
Lennon stayed low, breathing as shallow as he dared. His eyes streamed and stung. He grabbed Fegan’s collar and dragged him along the floor, managing a few feet before he had to stop, his lungs screaming.
Fegan rolled to his side and moaned. Lennon knelt down beside him.
‘Can you get to your feet?’ he asked.
Fegan blinked at him, his mouth open.
Lennon slapped his bloodied cheek. ‘Listen, I need you to move. It’s not far, just through the door.’
Fegan looked to the doorway, his face twisting as he tried to concentrate. His eyes cleared as he seemed to realise what Lennon wanted from him. He got to his hands and knees and crawled towards the door where smoke swirled in the battling air currents.
Lennon came alongside him, keeping his head down. He wedged a hand under Fegan’s arm and pulled him to his feet. They staggered together, but Lennon steadied them. If he could just get Fegan to the fire escape, only fifteen feet away. He dragged Fegan after him, moving more by the momentum of their bodies than the will of their legs. The blackness swallowed them, billowing up from the stairwell, carried by the searing heat.
‘Go,’ Lennon said, his throat tightening against the fumes. He pushed Fegan forward until he saw the light at the end of the corridor.
Fegan stumbled, landed on his knees. Lennon wrapped his arms around his torso and hoisted him up. He shoved him towards the open door and the fire escape’s platform beyond.
Lennon tumbled through the door after Fegan, both men collapsing against the steel grating. Fegan gulped air. The gash beneath his left eye streamed red, the flesh around it swollen and puffy. More blood coated his neck, trickling and pulsing from his nearly severed earlobe. Lennon pulled himself up by the railing and breathed deep. He spat over the edge, fighting the swimming sensation that started in his head and ran down to his legs.
‘Where are they?’ Lennon asked.
Fegan retched and coughed.
Lennon hunkered down beside him. ‘What did they do with them?’
Fegan turned his face to him. ‘Upstairs,’ he said, his speech slurred, his tongue red and swollen behind his teeth.
Lennon leaned back and looked at the platform above. ‘Up there? In what room?’
A fresh wave of heat burst out of the door. Through the smoke, Lennon saw the flames advance.
‘He told me the end of the corridor,’ Fegan said. He coughed again and spat blood on the grating. ‘In one of the old servants’ rooms.’
Fegan got to his feet, using the railing to haul himself upright. He lurched towards the metal stairs and climbed. Lennon followed, pushed past him, taking two steps at a time despite the weakness in his legs. Fegan quickened his pace behind him, his feet slapping hard and clumsy on the steel steps.
Lennon reached the upper platform and went for the door. Like the fire exit below, it was old with plain glass panes set in a wooden frame. He smashed one of the panes with the pistol’s butt and reached inside. The heat lapped at his hand as he fumbled at the lock. He pushed the door open and dropped low as a scorching black cloud billowed out.
Fegan reached the platform and staggered past Lennon into the darkness beyond the door.
Lennon followed him in. ‘Which room?’ he called after Fegan. The smoke attacked his chest, and he crouched down, coughing until his sides shrieked.
‘Here,’ Fegan said. He opened the nearest door, and fell through.
Lennon scrambled towards it. Through the black swirls he saw the shape of a man lying a few feet along the corridor, maybe a guard, either unconscious or dead. He crawled through the door and found Fegan hunched against the wall, his face blank and staring as his chest rose and fell. Tears mixed with the blood on his cheeks.
Marie McKenna sprawled on a bed, her sweater soaked red, her skin grey. Ellen lay on the floor beside Fegan, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted.
‘Christ,’ Lennon said. ‘Christ, no.’
He crawled towards Marie and took her hand. The chill went to his core, the skin of her fingers dry and papery. Lennon’s stomach turned on itself. He swallowed and forced his mind to focus, then reached over to Ellen, running the backs of his fingers across her cheek.
Still warm.
He pressed his ear to her chest. He tuned out everything, the crackling of the fire, the distant wailing of the smoke alarms, and listened. There, maybe, perhaps, a faint hint of a heartbeat.
He looked up at Fegan. ‘I think—’
Fegan sat forward.
Lennon leaned down so his cheek was an inch from her mouth. The softest movement of air brushed his skin, sweet and warm.
‘She’s alive,’ he said.
Fegan smiled. ‘Take her. Get out.’
Lennon took Marie’s hand one more time, squeezed the cold fingers between his, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Go,’ Fegan said.
Lennon gathered the child in his arms and stood up. ‘You can make it out. It’s only a few feet.’
‘I can’t,’ Fegan said. ‘I’m tired. I want to sleep. That was all I ever wanted. To sleep.’
Lennon supported Ellen in one arm, and grabbed Fegan’s collar with his free hand. Fegan brushed it away.
‘No.’ He coughed and gasped. ‘For Christ’s sake, get out and let me sleep.’
Lennon nodded and cradled Ellen. He turned and left Fegan in the room. The smoke in the corridor formed a solid wall now, and only a faint haze of light showed where the exit lay. He crouched as low as he could and made for it.
The floor rushed at him before he was aware of the grip on his ankle. He broke the fall with his forearms, pain shooting up from his elbows, and barely avoided crushing Ellen.
Big, hard hands grabbed at his legs, and Lennon couldn’t tell if they were clawing to escape, or trying to drag him back. He kicked out, his foot connecting with something huge and immovable before the hands seized him again.
Lennon looked back as he struggled to free himself from their grip and saw Bull O’Kane’s blackened face, his eyes wide and wild, his teeth bared.
The Bull screamed something as Lennon’s foot slammed into his jaw.
101
Fegan couldn’t be sure what got him moving. Had something shifted inside, telling him he wanted to live? Perhaps it was the fear of burning, though he knew the smoke would get him long before the flames. Whatever it was, it came with a burst of clarity, but something had preceded it. A shape in the swirling darkness, a woman with a baby in her arms, a woman with a soft, sad smile who had once shown him mercy. For a moment, he had thought she had come to welcome him to her place, wherever that was, but then she was gone and he wanted to move, tired as he was.
His legs carried him out to the corridor as his hands sought the walls for support. He went for the light, but stumbled over something hard and angular. The Bull’s upended wheelchair, he realised as he untangled himself from it. As he crawled, he found a pair of legs, one stiff and unmoving, the other pushing at the floor.
Fegan saw the broad back and heavy shoulders, the meaty hands clasping at something. He threw himself on Bull O’Kane’s back, snaked his arms around his huge chest, and pulled.
The old man screamed as Fegan dragged him deeper into the black. The smoke tore at Fegan’s eyes and throat, but he kept pulling as O’Kane struggled. The clarity and strength that had come upon him in Marie’s dying room began to slip away, and he pulled harder again, O’Kane’s weight wrenching at his arms.
O’Kane reached up, tried to find Fegan’s eyes. Instead, Fegan closed his teeth on the thick fingers and bit down. O’Kane squealed like a pig in an abattoir as the blood in Fegan’s mouth mixed with his.
The heat grew until Fegan smelled burning hair and felt the skin on the back of his neck blister. Through the blackness he saw flames rise up from the stairwell behind him. He hauled O’Kane closer, fighting the rolling waves of fatigue and nausea, until he found the lip of the top step under his foot.
O’Kane cried out as he saw the fire below piercing the smoke to illuminate them both. He reached up, trying to get hold of the railing, but Fegan turned his weight towards the drop. With one last push, he threw O’Kane down towards the flames, but the Bull’s fingers clasped at Fegan’s clothes. The world turned and tumbled, wooden steps rushing up to batter Fegan’s shoulders and ribs. His hand found the railing as O’Kane’s bulk carried him on through the smoke to the burning pit below. The fire swallowed the Bull along with his screams until the only sound was its own roar.
Fegan willed his legs to move, his arms to drag him up the steps. He tried to breathe, but his ribs howled as they flexed, and he knew they were broken. Up above, through the smoke, there was light. He crawled towards it, pushing back against the pain until it evaporated. The light brightened as he climbed. How many steps had he fallen down? Surely not this many. The steps seemed to go on and on until he stopped counting them.
Still he climbed until the light was everywhere, and he had forgotten everything he’d ever known except a golden day in Belfast, not so long ago, when Ellen McKenna held his hand.
Fegan fell, hard wooden steps pressing against his cheek and his chest, soft as air. Sleep beckoned like warm arms. He listened, the whole wide world rushing past his ears.
In a strange and simple realisation, he knew his heart had stopped. The whistling in his ears swelled and lightning flashed across his vision. Faces formed in the black river that raged about him, some kind and loving, others frightened and hateful. His mother passed among them, and he remembered the rocks by the Portaferry shore, her spinning in circles while his hands clung to hers, lighter than air, his feet free of the earth as they both giggled, and he grew dizzy and frightened, but the laughter was bigger, and they spun and spun and spun for so long he thought they would spin for ever, but then the lightning came again and that was all.
Gerry Fegan met eternity with sun and salt air on his skin.
102
Lennon laid Ellen out on the grass, her pale face turned skyward. Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. He pinched her nose and covered her mouth with his. Her chest rose as he blew gently then fell as he took his mouth away. As he blew again he scrambled for the prayers his mother used to recite. This time Ellen coughed as the air escaped her. She gasped as she pulled more in, her back arching for a moment, then coughed again. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open. Her chest rose and fell of its own accord.
He put his ear to her heart and heard it beat, pressed his cheek to hers, let her warmth meld with his. The last of his strength faded, and he collapsed to the grass beside her. He rolled onto his back and took her hand. Her fingers twitched between his. Fire leapt from the mansion’s upper windows. He knew grief lurked beneath the surface of his consciousness, but fatigue kept it submerged. It would have to wait.
Smoke curled up into the blue. Crows circled through it, cawing their alarm to one another. The sirens came closer, but he never heard them arrive.