Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“Please…,” he stammered. “Stop this…”

Blood had started to streak its way like lava from his nose, flowing across his lips, down his chin, dribbling onto the ground.

Hawker sniggered. “Why would we stop, sir, when we’re having such fun?”

Barnaby’s body had passed the point of total exhaustion and was barreling toward total shutdown. When he sneezed again, a pink strip of gristle was borne out on a sea of snot. “What’s your plan?” he gasped, with helpless pleading in his eyes. “What is this leading toward?”

The schoolboys laughed. “Plan, sir?”

“Gosh, whatever makes you think we’ve got anything so hoity-toity as a plan?”

“This is our glory, sir!”

“Our bally glory!”

Then, with the Prefects cheering him on, Barnaby gave a final nasal eruption and toppled face-first onto the tarmac. He landed with the same crack a hardcover book makes when one bends it back too far and snaps the spine.

“Well, that sneezy powder certainly works, doesn’t it, Boon?”

“Jolly well does, old chum. Most efficacious.”

Boon turned toward the car. Arthur tried to slide further down into his seat but it was too late. The schoolboy grinned.

“Good evening to you, sir!”

Hawker looked across and raised his hand in salute. “What ho, Arthur!”

“Sorry we can’t stay for a powwow but we’re already running late.”

“’Fraid we’ve got to cut, old man.”

“See you anon, sir!”

“Tinkety-tonk!”

The schoolboys ran into the building and Arthur was left alone in the car with only a dead body cooling on the tarmac for company.

Seconds later, the door to the warehouse clanked open and Mr. Streater emerged, accompanied by the opening chords of some pop track or other.

“School’s out for summer…”

He stepped adroitly over the corpse and got into the car. “All right, chief?”

The prince wasn’t listening. “They killed him…,” he murmured.

Streater shrugged. “Looks like.”

“Your friends were useless. They vanished. They disappeared.”

“Who are you talking about. What friends?”

“The detectives. Virtue and Mercy.”

Streater smirked as he twisted the key in the ignition. “Never heard of them. I expect that’ll be the ampersand, squire. Hallucinations come as standard. They’re often personifications of whatever parts of yourself you keep repressed. I saw ballerinas, believe it or not. But I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.” He reversed the car quickly on the tarmac, turned and headed swiftly out of Islington, toward home. “Whichever way you slice it — it’s all going according to plan.”

It was the last night of the Diabolism Club. After what unraveled there, I don’t suppose anyone had the stomach to carry on. The building was demolished, the ground concreted over, and I understand that there are currently plans to build some kind of monument, a memorial or a tombstone, on the spot where Diabolism used to stand.

It happened two minutes after Hawker’s salute and sixty seconds after all the lights in the building had flickered off. When someone eventually managed to get a couple of them going again, it was already too late. The place had turned insane. Adults dressed as children were screaming, sobbing, trying to escape; hundreds of liquored-up revelers frightened for their lives were charging for the doors in a stampede born of mortal desperation. Every one of them was sneezing. There was a cacophony of nasal distress. The air was filled with saliva, snot and tears, with mucus, spit and foam.

I was the lucky one. Immediately after the lights had gone out and just before that black, volcanic dust had sprayed down from the sprinkler system, I felt a soft hand clamp itself over my mouth and another apply itself firmly to my back and steer me toward the exit, jostling nimbly through the melee.

Later, I learnt that fifty-four people were hospitalized just trying to reach the door.

“What happened?” I gasped, once we were outside and Barbara had taken her hand away from my mouth.

The Directorate’s hunter raised a hand in her usual semaphore for silence. The weedy bouncer was still standing there, petrified and helpless, as his club vomited up its clientele.

Barbara snapped: “Call the emergency services. Tel them they have a disaster.” The man nodded stupidly and obeyed.

Whilst I did my best to calm a young woman whose nose had already started to spurt blood, Barbara, brisk and unflappable, spoke into her earpiece.

“Sir?”

The voice of Mr. Dedlock echoed in my head. “I trust you have good news.” He paused. “What is that rumpus?”

Barbara’s was a calm, still voice amongst the chaos. “The Prefects appear to have sprayed everyone inside the building with some sort of sneezing powder, sir.”

“Why on earth would they want to do that?”

“Why do little boys do anything, sir? For fun. For larks.”

“Where are those knobble-kneed bastards now?”

Barbara took out her PDA. “I can see them, sir. We can track them.”

“Then get after them!”

“People are dying here,” I said.

The old man was incensed. “If you don’t do your job, this city as we know it will cease to exist.”

“I’ll get the car,” said Barbara. “We’ll bring them in.”

“Do it.” A final snarl from Dedlock, then merciful silence in my head.

Barbara ran out of sight to get the car before I could think of anything to say.

I did my best to soothe the girl in my arms, tried to staunch the blood, told her to breathe deeply and think about not sneezing. After a while, it seemed to calm her, so I did what I could for some of the other victims until, at last, a fleet of ambulances blared onto the scene. I was easing a man whose body was close to rupturing into the arms of a paramedic when Barbara pulled me roughly to my feet. Her trench coat was back, billowing about her in the breeze.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

“But these people-”

“There’s nothing you can do for them.”

“Where’s the car? Where’s Barnaby? Where’s Jasper?”

The car is burning. Barnaby’s dead. And Jasper’s gone.”

Already, I was growing accustomed to Barbara’s delivery of bad news — catastrophe snapped out in telegraphic monosyllables. “Burning? Dead? Gone?” I asked, but she was already running. I left the paramedics to do their job and sprinted after her. “Barbara!”

She pelted on, ignoring me. There was a crackling in my ear and I heard the voice of Dedlock. “What’s happening?”

“Barbara: “We’re tracking them.”

“You mean you’ve let them get away?”

“The club’s in chaos. It masked their escape.”

Dedlock snapped some final, bitter instruction and broke the connection. The two of us dashed into the darkness of the city. Soon my breathing was ragged and I had an agonizing stitch in my side but Barbara, sprinting into the distance, appeared quite unaffected. I was about to lose sight of her completely when she gave a yelp of frustration.

When I caught up, she had stopped short and was staring at her PDA in furious disbelief.

I panted. “What’s happened?”

She struck the machine hard. “They’ve vanished.”

“What?”

“Disappeared. Dropped off the map.” Her shoulders sagged at the news and for a second or two I thought I caught a glimpse of the real Barbara, trapped behind that immaculate facade. “They’re playing with us.”