When he was through, Charlie helped me to my feet. 'You might as well have a piece,' he said, with a friendly chuckle. Lou laughed very loudly, pulling on his T-shirt. The others were shuffling back to their beds in a kind of embarrassment. Royce lay on the floor.
I knelt next to him. My blood splashed onto the floor. 'Can you get up, Royce?' I asked him. He didn't answer. 'Royce, let's go outside, get you cleaned up. ' He didn't move. 'Royce, are you hurt? Are you hurt badly?' then I called them all bastards.
'It was just fun, man,' said Harry.
'Fun!'
'It started out that way. He shouldn't have hit people. '
'He didn't want to do it. Royce, please. Do you want anything? Is anything especially painful?'
'Just his ass,' said Lou, and laughed.
'He'll be OK,' said Charlie, a shadow of confusion on his face.
'Like fuck he will. That was some way to say thanks for all he's done. Well? Are any of you going to give me a hand?'
Harry did. He helped me to get Royce up. Royce hung between us like a sack.
'It's that fucking poison you make, man,' said Harry to Charlie.
'Don't blame me. You were the first, remember. '
'I was just playing. '
They began to realize what they'd done. He was all angles, like a doll that didn't work anymore.
'What the fuck did you do?' I shouted at them. He didn't seem to be bruised anywhere. 'Jesus Christ!' I began to cry because I thought he was dead. 'You fucking killed him!'
'Uh-uh, no,' said Gary. 'We didn't. '
'Pisshead!'
Charlie came to help too, and we got him outside, and into the showers, and he slumped down in the dark. I couldn't find a rag, so we just let the lukewarm water trickle down over him. All we did was get him wet on an evening in November.
'It's cold out here, we got to get him back in,' said Harry.
Royce rolled himself up onto his knees, and looked at me. 'You were there. '
'I wasn't part of it. I tried to stop it. '
'You were there. You didn't help. '
'I couldn't!'
He grunted and stood up. We tried to help him, but he knocked our hands away. He sagged a bit at the knees, but kept on walking, unsteadily. He walked back into the waiting room. Silently, people were tidying up, straightening beds. Royce scooped up his clothes with almost his usual deftness. He went back to his bed, and dropped down onto it, next to Tom, and began to inspect his shirt and trousers for damage.
'The least you could have done!' I said. I don't know what I meant.
Lou was leaning back on his bed. He looked pleased, elbows sticking out from the side of his head. 'Look at it this way,' he said. 'It might do him some good. He shouldn't be so worried about his little problem. He just needs to relax a bit more, try it on for size. The worst thing you can do with a problem like that is hide from it. '
If I'd had an axe, I would have killed him. He knew that. He smiled.
Then the lights went out, without warning as always, but two hours early.
There was snow on the ground in the morning, a light dusting of it on the roof and on the ground. There was no patter. Royce did not talk to the cameras. He came out, wearing his jacket; there was a tear in his shirt, under the armpit. He ate his breakfast without looking at anyone, his face closed and still. Hardly anyone spoke. Big Lou walked around with a little half-grin. He was so pleased, he was stretched tight with it. He'd won; he was Boss again. No one used the showers.
Then we went out, and waited for the train.
We could see its brilliant headlight shining like a star on the track.
We could see the layers of wire-mesh gates pulling back for it, like curtains, and close behind it. We began to hear a noise coming from it.
It was a regular, steady drumming against metal, a bit like the sound of marching feet, a sound in unison.
'Yup,' said Charlie. 'the drugs have worn off. '
'It's going to be a bastard,' said Gary.
Lou walked calmly toward the cameras. 'Alice? What do we do?' No answer. 'We can't unload them, Alice. Do we just leave them on the train, or what?' Silence. 'Alice. We need to know what you want done. '
'Don't call me Alice,' said the camera.
'Could you let us back in, then?' asked Lou.
No answer.
The train came grinding into the platform, clattering and banging and smelling of piss. We all stood back from it, well back. Away from us, at the far end of the platform, James stood looking at the silver sky and the snow in the woods, his back to us, his headphones on. We could hear the thin whisper of Mozart from where we stood. Still looking at the woods, James sauntered toward the nearest carriage.
'James!' wailed Charlie. 'Don't open the door!'
'Jim! Jimmy! Stop!'
'James! Don't!'
He waved. All he heard was Mozart, and a banging from the train not much louder than usual. With a practiced, muscular motion, he snapped up the bolt, and pulled it back, and began to swing open the door.
It burst free from his grasp, and was slammed back, and a torrent of people poured down out of the carriage, onto him. His headphones were only the first thing to be torn from him. The Stiffs were all green and mottled, like leaves. Oh Christ, oh Jesus. Uniforms. Army.
We turned and ran for the turnstile. 'Alice! God-damn it, let us in!' raged Lou. The turnstile buzzed, angrily, and we scrambled through it, caught up in its turning arms, crammed ourselves into its embrace four at a time, and we could hear feet running behind us. I squeezed through with Gary, and heard Charlie behind us cry out. Hands held him, clawed at his forehead. Gary and I pulled him out, and Lou leapt in after us, and pulled the emergency gate shut.
They prowled just the other side of a wire mesh fence, thick necked, as mad as bulls, with asses as broad as our shoulders. 'We'll get you fuckers,' one of them promised me, looking dead into my eyes. They trotted from door to door of the train, springing them. They began to rock the turnstile back and forth. 'Not electric!' one of them called. They began to pull at the wire mesh. We had no weapons.
'Hey! Hey, help!' we shouted. 'Alice, Scarlett. Help!'
No answer. As if in contempt, the warm-up lights went on. 'We're using gas,' said Alice, her voice hard. 'Get your masks. '
The masks were in the waiting room. We turned and ran, but the cameras didn't give us time. Suddenly there was a gush of something like steam, in the icy morning, out from under the platform. I must have caught a whiff of it. It was like a blow on the head, and my feet crossed in front of each other instead of running I managed to hold my breath, and Royce's face was suddenly in front of me, as still as a stone, and he pushed a mask at me, and pulled on his own, walking toward the gate. I fumbled with mine. Harry, or someone, all inhuman in green, helped me. I saw Royce walking like an angel into white, a blistering white that caught the winter sunlight in a blaze. He walked right up to the fence, and stood in the middle of the poison, and watched.
The gas billowed, and the people billowed too, in waves. They climbed up over each other, in shifting pyramids, to get away, piling up against the fence. Those on top balanced, waving their arms like surfers, and there were sudden flashes of red light through the mist, and bars of rumpled flesh appeared across their eyes. One of them had fine light hair that burst into flame about his head. He wore a crown of fire.
The faces of those on the bottom of the heap were pressed against the fence into diamond shapes, and they twitched and jittered. The whole wave began to twitch and jitter, and shake, against the fence.
It must have been the gas in my head. I was suddenly convinced that it was nerve gas, and that meant that the nerves of the dead people were still working, even though they were dead. Even though they were dead, they would shake and judder against the fence until it fell, and then they would walk toward us, and take us into their
