The Fall

14

Lee Burton heard screams. He opened his eyes to see the logo of the building society he’d once worked for woven into the carpet – the letters WRBS sitting inside a yellow disc. His blood was soaked into it, like red wine soaking through kitchen tissue. And he saw a pair of green trainers.

A voice said, ‘I warned you I’d shoot, didn’t I? Didn’t I?’

He rolled over and looked up at the hooded face; the eyes stared back at him, wide with horror. He smelled the sharp tang of gunsmoke drifting on the still air of the building society. Lee smelled soap, too. In a disjointed way, the realisation that the robber had washed himself using perfumed soap was astonishing. Bank robbers should smell of stale sweat, engine oil, possibly a little whiskey, too, not Pear’s soap. Lee shook his head. It felt fuzzy, as if he’d been sitting in a hot stuffy room too long. He was slipping into unconsciousness.

No.

He couldn’t allow himself to go to sleep on the carpet there.

Lee tried to take a deep breath. But his chest felt so tight it was as though someone had wound a huge rubber band around it. ‘Give me the gun. You must give me the gun.’

‘Fuck you, you stupid bastard.’

The robber backed away.

Lee dragged himself to his feet. The Dracula cape felt as heavy as iron on his back. He wished he could take it off. Only he couldn’t. That button… that stupid button… he’d have to change it for a smaller one…

No… wait… he’d got something to do.

Test.

Assignment.

‘Oh, my God…’ Lee said under his breath. ‘The test’s not over yet. He’s getting away.’ Suddenly he yelled. ‘He’s getting away!’

He looked round groggily at the shocked faces of the staff and customers.

‘Don’t you see?’ he shouted. ‘This is my test. I can’t let him get away!’

He lumbered at the door, threw it open.

The robber ran along the street, pushing shoppers away, yelling, waving the gun.

Any second now, he might start firing, Lee thought. There’re innocent people. Children…

Come on, he told himself. You’re still being tested. The sun is God’s eye. He’s watching you. Evaluating you.

Lee charged after the robber. Now his chest and arms felt strangely numb. Only his stomach stung as though a giant wasp had planted its stinger through his navel.

Shoppers backed away quickly from Lee, opening a path as he ran. Face white with the corpse make-up; black cape flapping extravagantly behind him. And, covering his shirt, a crimson stain that soaked the white cotton frills from his throat to his belt.

He ran as hard as he could; the cloak was like cast iron weighing him down. He could hardly breathe. Blood bubbled from his nostrils every time he exhaled.

And he thought of his mother. How would she react if she saw him like this? Her youngest son, dying on his feet? He knew she’d remember him as a baby. When she’d stayed up all night with him when he’d had the whooping cough that had nearly killed him. She’d stroked his forehead while murmuring gently to him. She’d remember the occasion, after a spasm of coughing that sounded like someone blowing on a whistle, when he’d stopped breathing and she’d wept and prayed and hugged him. Then she’d gently pinched his nostrils and blown into his mouth, forcing air through his swollen throat, inflating his lungs that were congested with sputum. She’d brought him through it alive.

But I’m already dead now, he told himself. Blood sprayed from his mouth like crimson aerosol paint with every breath as he ran. I’m already dead.

The robber ran to a waiting car, threw open the door, swung himself in.

Lee heard the man yelling: ‘Go! Go! Go!’

The driver slammed the pedal to the matting. Wheels screeching, filling the street with smoke, the car rocketed forward.

No… no… Lee stopped, panting out gobs of blood. He could never catch the car. He’d failed his test.

And all the time, the sun burned in the sky, scrutinising his every action with an unwaveringly judgemental glare.

Hell waited for him now. A screaming hell of eternal damnation, pain and loneliness.

No, wait… He saw the car had taken a left. The only way now was for the car to join the ring road that curved around the town before heading north to join the motorway.

Lee visualised that curved road. It hugged the town centre close for half a mile yet. For another minute or so the getaway car would be the road’s prisoner.

A huge burst of energy revitalised Lee. Despite the bullet holes in his stomach he ran across the pedestrian precinct. The cape blew out horizontally behind him. Shoppers stumbled back from him in shock. A scared child started a wailing cry.

He cut down an alleyway, leaping over discarded boxes. Ahead, he could see the section of ring road the getaway car had to follow.

He pumped everything into that hundred-yard dash down the alleyway to the ring road.

Seconds later he was there. Calmly, he walked out into the road.

Now he went to stand on the white lines that separated the two northbound lanes of the road. Cars, taxis, trucks screamed by him, horns bleating. They didn’t trouble him. He waited serenely for the car to come. A tall, thin man with bright, shining eyes that gazed levelly into the flow of oncoming traffic, his black cape wafted this way and that by the slipstream. His white shirt bloomed redly in the sunlight. The blood stain seemed to form a red bull’s-eye there.

Lee Burton awaited his destiny.

Sam Baker returned to the Range Rover where Zita sat impatiently drumming her fingers on the steering wheel.

He wasn’t alone.

The blond man had returned with him.

‘Where’s Lee?’ Sam asked as he handed Zita the newspaper.

‘God knows,’ she said. ‘He just climbed out of the car and ran across there like the Devil himself was after him.’

‘Never mind him.’ The blond man’s voice was crisp. ‘Take a look at the paper. At the date.’

Zita raised her eyebrows at Sam. ‘It’s okay,’ Sam told her. ‘He knows.’

‘I know what happened,’ the man said. ‘That we’ve just been picked up and dropped backwards by precisely one week.’ He climbed into the front passenger seat and snapped on the seat-belt. ‘But I don’t know how it happened. Just how 50 people can be transported back in time. And it’s the how that fascinates me.’ He shut the door then popped his blond head through the open window. ‘You’d best hop in the back, Sam old boy. Unless you want leaving behind.’

Sam’s eyes met Zita’s. Why did it feel to him that the blond-haired man had just taken charge?

Lee Burton stood there beneath a sun that was the eye of God.

Or at least that’s what Lee told himself.

A huge eye, burning with fire, and with the power to see him down there on the road.

This my test, he told himself. I have to get this right.

Calmly, he faced the cars and trucks as they flowed by him at either side. Engines snarled in fury; horns blasted. The slipstream tugged, then pushed him until he rocked on his heels.

Behind him the cape rippled and snapped like a sheet on a washing line.

The getaway car must come this way.

Only then could he complete his test.

He didn’t see the drivers’ faces. The cars were a blur. He awaited only that white BMW with the green sun-strip across the top of the windscreen.

He didn’t have long to wait.

Hurtling along the curve of the fast lane came the BMW, its big tyres eating the road tar between himself and it.

Here it comes.

Lee waited for a taxi to pass by before stepping into the centre of the fast lane.

Now the white BMW bore down on him. He could see the two men through the windscreen, the green sun-strip across the top of the glass. They stared at him through the eyeholes of their black hoods in sheer disbelief.

As if re-enacting the part of some dotty policeman in an old Ealing comedy, Lee Burton stood there in the fast lane of the bypass, facing the oncoming car, and raised his hand to stop it.

The BMW was boxed in by trucks in the slow lane. It couldn’t swerve to avoid him.

It sure as hell wasn’t going to stop.

I’m dead, Lee told himself.

I’m already dead.

The car can’t hurt me.

Even so, that half-ton of steel, glass and plastic hurtling towards him seemed solid enough.

And he seemed human enough.

He could hardly breathe. His stomach hurt. Blood ran from the bullet holes in his skin. And, at that moment, he was gripped by a near-overwhelming urge to urinate.

He felt human enough. All too human.

The car roared at him. The two men’s eyes blazed at him like pairs of headlights.

But this is a test…

He couldn’t run away from it. The car was nearly on him. At that moment he ran.

Not away from the car.

Towards it.

He ran hard, cape flapping, breath coming in liquid-sounding squirts through his throat.

Before the car hit him he dived up over the bonnet straight at the windscreen. Already, he’d gripped the cape in one fist and dragged it up over his face to protect himself as best he could.

There was a tremendous concussion that swept the breath from his body.

When he breathed in, it wasn’t air that entered his body but pain. Spikes of white-hot agony that tore through every cell of his anatomy.

He heard screams, but they weren’t only his own.

Opening his eyes, he saw that he lay in the torn shreds of the cape. He realised he was inside the car, lying with the top half of his body through the glass almost on the lap of the gunman himself

‘Finish him!’ the driver screamed.

The bank robber fumbled the gun from his jacket pocket.

Meanwhile, the car lurched from side to side as it sped along the road. The engine howled.

It’s a test, it’s a test, Lee thought dazedly.

The robber had now pulled the gun clear of his pocket.

He aimed it at Lee’s head.

Instead of going for the gun, Lee reached up, grabbed the front of the driver’s mask and tugged it down. Immediately, the top of the balaclava covered the driver’s eyes.

‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’ the driver bellowed. ‘Get him off me!’

Lee watched the other man point the gun. The muzzle dug into the flesh between Lee’s eyes.

Then there was a concussion and the car was turning over and over…

Lee Burton opened his eyes.

He lay on the grass. Above him, the sun, which was God’s great radiant eye, blazed down.

He turned his head to the left. The white BMW lay upside down on the grass. A steel fence lay crumpled around it. The driver hung suspended by his seatbelt. He’d pulled off the balaclava and hung there, groaning. A trickle of blood ran from his nose up his face to his forehead to drip onto the car roof.

A front tyre slowly turned. Steam hissed from the smashed radiator.

Lee turned his head the other way.

There was a railway track. The gunman lay across one of the tracks as if asleep.

He’s dead, Lee told himself. But a second later the man groaned and moved one arm.

At that moment came the rumble of a train. It came nearer and nearer with a clattering roar.

I’ve failed, Lee told himself. I’ve killed him. I shouldn’t have done that.

The train tore by.

But it ran along the farthermost track, which was a good ten feet from the gunman.

The gunman tried to move, but it was clear to Lee that the man had smashed both legs when he’d been thrown from the car.

Lee’s own body felt pretty badly broken up, too. Blood drenched him. He could barely breathe. One arm was bent back at the elbow. His legs were numb and wouldn’t move when he tried to stand.

He realised that he was lying on a grass strip that separated the ring road from the railway track. The grass was spattered with dandelions and daisies looking like confetti after a wedding. Also, there were splotches of red. These were scattered like crimson rubies on the grass and glistened richly in the sunlight. When Lee sneezed, there were suddenly more of them.

By now, the gunman appeared to have lost consciousness on the track. In any event, he lay there quietly without moving.

In the distance Lee heard another train. He didn’t doubt this would tear along the track to slash the man’s body in two.

This is part of the test… This is part of the test… The words drummed through Lee’s head.

Part of the test…

Agonisingly, he began to crawl towards the unconscious man.

The train sounded louder.

Lee dragged himself across the stone bed of the track, up onto the rail.

At that moment the man opened his eyes and turned his head towards Lee.

The man screamed. A scream of pure terror.

Just for a second, Lee imagined he was looking through the robber’s eyes at himself What a sight he would have made. A long, skinny young man, wearing a Dracula cape, his shirt soaked in blood, legs broken, yet still crawling forward like some indefatigable nightmare predator, determined to claim his victim come what might.

The robber screamed again. ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ The voice came out croakily from a mouth full of smashed teeth, vomit and blood. ‘I’m sorry I shot you. Please believe me, I – I’m sorry… I’m sorry. Leave me alone, I won’t do it again.’ He sounded like some snotty-nosed kid caught stealing apples from an orchard. ‘Please! I won’t do it again, I won’t—’

The robber tried his damnedest to jump up and run. But Lee saw the man had broken enough bones in his body to leave him as incapable of movement as a jellyfish stranded high and dry on the beach.

The sound of the train grew louder.

The ground vibrated, rattling Lee’s teeth together.

A blood-red mail train thundered around the bend in the track.

This is it!

Do or die.

Grabbing the man with his good arm Lee rolled him off the track.

The man was safe now.

Lee himself dropped back, bloody, exhausted, broken. He looked up at the sun, hoping to see some wink of approval.

Instead, he heard the approaching roar of the train.

He turned his head to the left and saw his broken arm lying across a rail that shone like silver in the hard sunlight.

The train thundered by.

Lee watched the steel wheels cut through the arm at the elbow.

The severed hand and arm lay on its back between the tracks. The fingers twitched and danced and grasped.

Feeling detached from reality, Lee marvelled. It reminded him of days by the seaside when he’d catch a crab in a pool. If he turned it on its back it would move its legs in exactly the same kind of way as those waving fingers,

As he lay there, darkness swelled like a tidal wave and engulfed him.