Authors: Craig Saunders
XXII.
That Which Makes us Human
The
only highways left uncovered by January were those which remained in peoples'
minds. Two led to O'Dell. And from O'Dell's shattered thoughts were roads that
led on, into those whose lives he touched, and broke. Towers full of those he
filled with memories he could not bear.
US
waited in those towers, below their creator. Nearly five hundred children, some
now grown into men. Long ago, O'Dell hollowed them out and filled them with a
past he didn't want.
US
held powers like their tormentor, their
creator...but more, too.
He
thought he had emptied them of everything but
his
will.
He
was wrong.
Empty
things can be filled again. They weren't separate, lonely, or trapped, even,
within their ruined bodies, but an entity far beyond, far greater, than
O'Dell's imagining.
*
O'Dell's
blood-stained, blood-crusted suit was littered with crumbs, splashed with
coffee or whiskey - filthy, full of the smell of a man lost. The man had always
been fastidious about his appearance, but cleanliness seemed of little
importance now. Often, he found himself adrift, and would rouse to find fresh
blood had joined the dry stains that spread from collar to his wasting belly.
He ate, but sparsely, and his gaunt, grinning face was just skin tight over
hard bone. No fat left - a man pared down to the absolute necessities.
His
hands ached from daily seizures, his back pained him from sitting so long, his
clenched teeth cracked somewhere at the back, a fissure that sang at each cold
sip of whiskey, or the occasional burning coffee, or just the air from a deep
breath.
The
pain was just an irritation. It was his constant confusion that troubled him.
He
spoke to himself either inside his head, or this strange twin on a screen
before him. He didn't remember creating the
other
him.
Perhaps
there had been a point where they created each other.
You
killed US.
These
words got through to O'Dell sometimes, but his mind was powerful. He'd made
himself forget, hadn't he? He'd created
US
. Kurt William O'Dell. They
were
his
idea. They existed because of
his
talents. A man who turned
these children's mind to his ends, a man who had killed the world could ignore
whispered words easily enough.
US.
Sleep. O'Dell, sleep. Put the gun in...
'Shut
up, for fuck's sake. Shut up. I'm the one who whispers. You're babies.'
Older.
All of US. Older. Take the gun, O'Dell. Take...
O'Dell
pushed himself from the seat that was his bed and day chair. On the floor
across the room, beneath one of many monitor banks, was a whiskey crate. Once
full, three of twenty-four bottles remained. He winced, leaning down to take
one, then returned to the chair and twisted off the top and drank from the
bottle.
'Not
long now,' he said, and saluted himself on the screen before him.
Two
days before, he'd shut down every life support system throughout the three
towers.
US
was dying.
*
US
called to
George in the night.
George
walked his own road in dreams. His road was much like his mother's - a personal
thing, nothing like the broad, paved highways of so many others. He walked an
alley between rows and rows of vast buildings, but sometimes the alley strayed
between playing fields or playgrounds, or beside the banks of rivers, or city
streets he knew.
A
voice called out to him, somewhere to the right on his alley. He found a door
set in an old walls - brick, flint, mortar or cement, grown high with ivy and
other creepers. The door was strong but old and green from the elements. A
black latch on a black handle - wrought iron, cast iron, he didn't know - moved
easily.
On
this alley, he could be large, small, weak, strong, old, young. Imagination and
reality blended. Memories' pathways, but ones full of other possibilities, too.
Behind
the door a well-tended garden. Hedges and mown grass, stone statuettes and
benches. A patio, flagstones. But where he imagined a house should be - like a
stately home, in the centre of such grand gardens, was a shimmering, wavering
presence
.
Not quite smoke, or dust, or even swirling. Sparks and lights flicked between
clouds that sat or moved - every movement but those sparks was languid and
perfect, in unison, like clouds that danced, but to no rhythm or pattern that
he could discern.
Are
you US?
he asked, but of course he knew the answer.
He's
killing US, George. It must be now.
I'm
not strong enough,
he said inside his dream.
Francis isn't strong
enough. She nearly died.
Those
flickers are thoughts
,
he realised. When US spoke, the sparks were brighter and more numerous than
lightning within a simple cloud.
It
isn't a cloud, either. It's a mind, free of flesh.
The
cloud brightened and darkened, too, when it thought of one thing or another.
Francis
is strong enough. The Mother is strong enough. You must be. You will not be
alone.
The
cloud was gone. George found himself outside, on his alley. The door, too, was
gone.
If
they die, O'Dell wins,
he thought.
The
world was lost and maybe it was always meant to be.
George
opened his eyes and his dream was gone. In its place was knowing - an older
voice than his.
Without
US, humanity is lost, too.
*
George
still walked with a limping gait that was unnatural and confused, like a man
might after a stroke - trying desperately to achieve things which people did
every day with no thought or effort.
He
did walk, though. He combed his hair with his fingers, felt the cold in his
bones each day, despite the fires they mostly managed to keep burning.
When
he came from the dining room where they all slept (there was a second floor,
but the cold beat back the heat where the bedrooms were) Francis and his mother
were at a small round table where they ate a simple meal heated on the
stove-top.
Sleep
was still in George's eyes, but his mother and Francis knew him well - his
mother all his life, Francis just as long, perhaps, though more intense - time,
compacted.
'Is
it happening, George?' said Eleanor. 'It is, isn't it?'
George
nodded. The food, simple beans in a tin, smelled wonderful. He was nine, and
often hungry, but he ignored the food.
He
sat so they were in a rough triangle, and took a hand in each of his so he
could speak to them without one having to interpret. Speaking to two minds at
once didn't prove as difficult as he imagined.
'George?'
said Francis.
It's
US,
he said.
O'Dell is killing them.
'So
we stop O'Dell? Now? Shouldn't we...'
There's
nothing we can do that we haven't done. No guns, no...press-ups.
The
two women smiled, but George did not.
I
think this is why I'm here. They called me, and you, Francis, and Mum, and
Edgar and John and all the others... they looked out for us. I know they did.
Because they need us. But we need them. The world's gone. We have to made it
new again.
George,
said Eleanor, her words inside Francis' mind, too.
Is that you? Or...
Mum...I'm
me, however old I am. Close your eyes.
He
closed his eyes and felt their pain.
US
cried out to him. Their mind
hurt, rather than their body...but all they had was thought.
Remember
the Mill, Francis? When he let us go? Remember the cell, mum? He let you go,
too. O'Dell didn't mean to do those things. I met them last night, in my dream.
George the child
only thought
US
pushed and pulled all this time, but that older voice in
his head
knew
it. And he trusted that voice, not because it was always
right (it was). He trusted that voice
because it was
him
.
Guide
them,
said that voice who spoke only for George.
George
tried, with the words he had at nine and the thoughts he would have in years to
come, to show his mum and Francis the way back, to O'Dell.
Don't
think of O'Dell. He's a...slip road. He's a small road, just a single lane,
that leads to the motorway. The motorway is where we want to be.
I'm
ready,
said
Francis.
Go,
George,
said
his mum.
And come home safe.
He drew their
highways together, so the road was fast and true.
For
George, O'Dell's mind was just dead space. It was a black spot where he could
not go. Not alone. Once, perhaps, in a place called the Mill, he thought he had
been inside O'Dell's mind. But he hadn't. He never could do that.
It
was
US.
O'Dell
thought of the dead boys as nothing but husks. But he'd freed them.
He'd destroyed
everything and in doing so created an entity comprised solely of that which
makes us human. Humanity, but a giant.
Where
Francis' and Eleanor's roads ended, George's path did not. He sped right
through and out the other side, onto the wide motorway beyond. There was no
traffic. His feet were light and sure, nothing like those he struggled to
control in the physical world. He could have been a car, had he wanted, or
simply flew along the road, but George understood walking.
The
motorway led everywhere George needed to go and nowhere he didn't. All those
directions he could choose led to boys and men in beds and wheelchairs, or
forgotten on cold, bare floors. Broken minds, each of them.
George
passed through those roads, cul-de-sacs, blind bends and dead-ends, and beyond
roads and mortal constructs entirely to the place where
US
existed.
George,
the dead boy, the boy who came back.
Before
him, all the others who stayed behind.
Hello,
he said.
Hello,
George.
Am
I one of you? Am I one of US?
No.
You are George.
Are
you strong enough?
With
you, George. We are.
And
with those words, purpose.
One
thought, and just like lightning in that shifting cloud, only one place to go.
*
It
was 1964. O'Dell drank alone in a pub named The Eagle and Child when a man he
didn't remember approached him. This time a small boy walked behind and took a
seat. The boy was handsome, but his head bore bad scars beneath a good head of
hair. Once, the child's hair had been blonde. Now, grown in after being shaved
bald, it was darker. The boy watched.
The
man spoke.
'Hello
again, Kurt.'
'Please
excuse me, but I think you have to wrong man, Sir,' said O'Dell, and George
felt his confusion.
'Mr.
Fenchurch, Mr. O'Dell. You remember me. Of course you do.'
'Have
we met before?'
'Of
course, Mr. O'Dell. We met some time ago,' said Fenchurch, who took a seat
opposite O'Dell without having the courtesy to ask first.