arms, saw grey dryness wriggle over our skin, settle between the gaps in our fingers, stiff and locked in place, run up our arm, crawl into our armpit, slide over our chest, press against our neck, a thick, suffocating solid scarf that dug into our throat, made it hard to breathe, tiny twitches of the lung within its fixed frame. I pressed my lips tight shut and closed my eyes, but still tasted the dust on my lips, dry sickly nothing sucking out everything good from sense, felt it dribble into my ears, snatched one last frantic breath before it bunged up my nose, a bad cold backwards, felt it dribble over my eyelids, slide into the hairs of my eyebrows and close over the top of my head. As the concrete drained down my legs, the wall began to buckle and bend in on itself, its substance sucked away; and before it could set around my knees, I stood up, and turned to face what seemed to be the source of the sound.
deDum!
deDum!
Concrete locked my feet in place. My fingers were turned towards the heartbeat, I could feel it shake my solid shell, see nothing but darkness, breathe nothing, smell nothing, every sense blocked, except that distant
My head was burning up, air that was no longer air unable to get out of my lungs, blocking my throat, a stone sinking deeper and deeper down into my chest, every part withering inside, every blood vessel in my body stalling, warping, fracturing. We were going to die, us alone in a concrete shell, die from a heartbeat in a basement in . . .
. . . in
We didn’t want to die please no not the end not the end not back there not again not the end not us not no- sense not no-sight not no-colour please not prison again please not
please please please please
I listened for it, found the rhythm again, pounding against my shell, and as it came
I forced my legs to move. Strained against the concrete around my knees, forced my whole weight forwards, like a tree about to topple, felt it fracture, crack and as the
The shock sent fault lines rippling up my shell, but that just made it easier to move, I listened again,
moved again, pressing myself into it, pushing back on the sound with every gram of will and strength I had, saw light ripple across my vision as a fracture line ran across the concrete over my face, tasted dust worming between my lips, stepped again, each step a giddy flight up to boiling clouds and back down again, heart bursting inside, ready to pop, hammering
Pushed against it, threw it back again, felt a shock run down the length of my spine as the backlash from the sound cracked my armour shell, felt concrete jar against my ribs as it began to tear and break, but I was moving now, dust falling from my legs, I had momentum and with each step I took, I sent as much sound bouncing back as I received. I could feel broken glass from shattered lights fall across the solid frame around my head, see the lights go out through the little spreading cracks across my vision, kept moving, pushing back against the sound like it was an avalanche and I a very angry rock.
The concrete shattered around my right hand, I felt it fall away and my fingers come free, pale and dusted, felt the sound twist at my palm, try to crash down against the little bones in there, clenched my fist against it and kept moving.
The lower concrete covering of my left leg fell away. I nearly fell with it; kept going, bowing head first into the force of the roar, and
the concrete skull cracked; I could feel it rippling down my neck, playing pins-and-needles across my shoulders
began to shatter; not around my ears, I prayed, sound and pain, no more pain, not there, not . . .
and our right hand was on fire, blood seeping down our wrist and we were nearly there, so close, red blood catching with blue fire, blue electric flames that spat and hissed and threw angry sparks across the floor as it writhed over our skin, electric oil burning electric flesh and we let it burn, let the fire spread throughout our body, set the cracks running through this concrete coffin ablaze, let the neon flame spread throughout and carry us that last pace as our lungs prepared to give up the ghost, fed them on fire and fury and
and it was right there, right in front of us, we could feel it, hear it, knew it. We reached out with a hand on fire and felt our fingertips brush spiked bone as
the shock blasted away the concrete across our chest, ripped it from our neck, sent dust spilling out from around our ears and . . .
One more beat of the heart, that’s all it needed, one more beat and goodnight and goodbye and . . .
Our fingers closed around his heart. His contracted heart, waiting to pump. We could feel bright hotness, stiff, solid flesh, like a lump of uncooked steak, feel his ribs scratching at our dust-covered sleeve, feel the valves trying to move and expand in the claw of our grip. We held on tighter, fighting that strength back within his chest, pushing his heart shut within him, and it was strong but so were we, and we were on fire.
He screamed.
Big men shouldn’t scream. It’s the yowling of a baby with a soiled nappy, the wail of the kid on the landing plane whose ears have just started to pop. It’s pure and animal and ugly.
I shook the last of the concrete shield from me, tumbling it to dust all around. Glancing over my shoulder I could see the whole near wall was largely down, just a few foundation spikes and a lot of shattered slabs, and in my wake a floor of dust and broken dirt, running from the wall to where I now stood, fingers buried in the Executive Officer’s chest.
By the burning of our skin, by the bright electric fire running over our flesh, I could see his face, almost black now with the effort of death, and we hissed, “Tell us!”
His lips were the blue-black of an evening storm, his eyes were nearly all out of their sockets, the equators of the spheres starting from between his rolled-back eyelids. I relaxed the pressure on his heart a moment, let it beat a frail, constricted beat within my fingertips, then tightened my fist again. Someone, with a scalpel dipped in acid, had scrawled blessings, incantations, inscriptions and wards all over the inside of his ribs, carved them into the muscular wall of his heart. They were the only reason he wasn’t dead. They were the things that kept him almost alive.
“‘Give me back my hat’,” we said. “Tell us what it means.”
“Don’t know!” he wheezed, tongue waggling like a sick pup between his lips. “Don’t know!”
We tightened our fingers on a valve in his chest and he couldn’t even scream, there wasn’t enough blood and air. But his mouth opened, his head rolled back and every part of him spoke of agony until I relaxed our grip again. “What about the kid? Where’s Mo?”
“Took him . . . hid him . . .”
