obligation lay on her shoulders like a millstone.
'In this world we've ended up with,' he said, 'things are just too, too tragic.'
She smiled and electricity jumped between them, but the poignancy was almost too painful for him to bear. She pulled back and his hands fell from her waist. 'Bye, Harvey,' she said with a wave.
There was a hint of relief in his smile. 'You want to get some shampoo for that hair, Red Sonja.'
She laughed, dropped from the platform on to the tracks. They watched her as she moved along the lines, and only once did she look back before the darkness swallowed her up. At that moment Thackeray thought he was going to die.
Harvey slapped a hand on his shoulder. 'I'm sorry, mate. But look on the bright side… you'd never have been able to argue with her.' Thackeray tried to pierce the gloom, imagining her wending her way out into the night, fierce and beautiful and wild, like nature. 'I'd have jumped through fire for her, Harv. I'd have crossed the world.'
'You're a stupid romantic, Thackeray, and it's a wonder you've got any friends.' Harvey turned away and waved the torch towards the exit. 'Come on… let's nick Buckland's whisky stash.'
Chapter Thirteen
'O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!'
Crowther was hot and irritable and the path appeared to go on for ever. The still air beneath the trees had grown oppressively muggy and even long drinks from the numerous cool streams that cut through the forest did little to ease his discomfort.
Mahalia, dealing with her grief, spoke little, but what worried him was that when she did talk, she was polite, thoughtful, almost good-natured. He was concerned that Carlton's death was an unbearable stress that could eventually destroy her.
'It might help to talk about him,' he said as he watched her kicking small stones into the thick undergrowth. 'The boy… uh, Carlton…'
'There's nothing to talk about.'
'You could tell me how you met him.'
She thought about this for a moment, then said, 'It was after I'd escaped… from the attic. I'd been living rough, trying to get food anywhere I could…' She grimaced. 'I ate some disgusting things, just to stay alive. That showed me you'd do anything to survive — anything.' She continued walking, not looking at him. 'I expect you can guess what it was like — a young girl on the street, easy target. One morning four men, four bastards…' She spat the word. '… tried to rape me. Broad daylight, on the footpath, in one of the main shopping areas. People were nearby. Nobody cared, however much I screamed. They just wanted to get on with their business. My problems were my problems.'
Crowther watched the back of her head, reading the unspoken emotions amongst her words.
'Carlton came out of nowhere,' she continued. 'Somehow he rounded up some of those people walking by — I don't know how he did it, he couldn't talk, but, you know, he had a way about him — people liked him, people followed him…' She stifled a sob in her throat, took a moment to wipe her eye, but still remained in control, still diamond-hard. 'They drove the men off… saved me. Carlton saved me. And when he came over and held out his hand to help me up, and just smiled, that way he always did, I knew I'd found a friend — someone who'd help me, someone I could help.'
Crowther watched her shoulders grow taut and her head bow. Awkwardly, he reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulders. He felt uncomfortable at making such a connection, but it did the job, for she flashed him a brief, sad smile. It made her look like a different person.
'Now we're never going to find out who he really was… or what he could do,' she said.
'Perhaps he was simply a good person,' Crowther said. 'No more, no less. Perhaps he had already done the job intended for him, and nothing more was planned for him. His work was over.'
Mahalia eyed him curiously. 'Do you believe in God, Professor?'
'I did, then I didn't, and now… I'm open to arguments.' The question unnerved him and he quickly moved the conversation away. 'So where do you come from, young Mahalia? You've been a little bit of a dark horse since we met. You've clearly had the benefit of a good education and there's an air of the well-to-do about you.' He kicked himself mentally for sounding so false, but trying to be nice didn't come easily to him. It felt as if they were two blind people groping round in the dark, trying to discover if the other was animal, mineral or vegetable.
She sighed and for a second he thought she was not going to answer. But the openness they had both displayed had worked a spell on her. 'I don't really like talking about the past,' she said. 'It's gone, dead. But… OK… I went to Cheltenham Ladies' College. A boarder. My dad and mum lived in Hampshire. He ran a financial services company. Mum did charity work, that sort of stuff. It wasn't easy to be black in those sorts of circles, but they did OK. They seemed to like it. When the Fall came and everything started going mad, I tried to get back to them. I stole a car with a couple of friends, and when it ran out of petrol I walked. Got back to the house just over a week later. There was no sign of them.'
'Do you have any idea what might have happened?'
She shook her head, but had a strange faraway look on her face, as if remembering long-forgotten facts. 'There was some food on the table, half-eaten, but they were gone — like they'd been snatched away. Who knows? Whatever… you know, the things they did… they didn't give them any sort of skills to survive in the world we've got now. In their world, they were big shots, but now… what use are people who only know how to make money?'
He raised his voice as a strong breeze rustled the undergrowth. 'You're very keen on this survival thing.'
She shrugged. 'When it comes down to it, you've only got yourself. No one else is going to look after you.'
He couldn't argue with that. Mopping his brow, he realised something curious: there was no cooling breeze, so how could the undergrowth continue to rustle? The answer came at him like a wolf, and he turned with dread. Purple light floated amongst the trees as far as his eye could see. The Lament-Brood's advance had been as silent as death, hidden behind the conversation and the background noise of the forest. He cursed himself for not being more on guard.
His shock was compounded when he saw that the army had at least doubled in size from the number that had emerged from the river. Could the Whisperers have altered some of the Gehennis, perhaps other of the forest's mysterious inhabitants? A virus, infecting, transforming, spreading exponentially.
Crowther urged Mahalia to run just as the insidious whispering grew louder. He imagined the virulent sound as snakes slithering through the vegetation, preparing to rise up once near them.
Mahalia was lighter on her feet and quickly moved ahead while the professor lumbered on behind, lungs burning, face red. Further back, but not much, the thunder of the Lament-Brood's mounts shook the ground.
Mahalia slowed when she realised he wasn't at her heels.
'Don't wait for me,' he said.
She hesitated.
'I said, don't wait for me!'
She broke ahead and he did his best to keep up, the whispering growing more intense, insinuating into Crowther's head. Black thoughts bloomed, their florid misery spreading through his mind. His legs grew leaden.
Give up. Lie down. Die.
With a rapid flick of his wrist, he smacked his staff against his forehead, and then even harder against his
