Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

‘You all right?’

Samantha’s smile became a grin. ‘Told you.’ She eased down another foot. ‘This dinner you owe me, it better be a-’

Creak. The pipe juddered. Her eyes went wide. ‘Oh…’

A clang, a little tearing noise, just audible through the flames.

The section of downpipe she was holding on to lurched to the right, the bracket fell, disappearing into the darkness. She scrabbled for the length of pipe still attached to the wall, but her fingers grabbed empty air.

‘Logan…?’

It happened in slow motion: her fingers scrabbled at nothing as the section of pipe she was climbing burst free of its rusting support brackets. Then she was falling, arms pin-wheeling, legs running on an invisible treadmill. Mouth open in a perfect ‘O’, the whites of her eyes shining from her soot-streaked face.

Bits of broken pipe tumbled end over end around her. The tail of the fitted sheet fluttering from her arm like a pennant.

Then back to full speed again.

She slammed into the flat roof, three storeys below, and went straight through it. A cloud of orange-grey dust burst into the air, hung there, then drifted up the granite wall, pulled by the temperature gradient.

‘SAMANTHA!’ Logan tried to flatten himself to the building, feet dug into the last bracket before the pipe came to an abrupt end. ‘SAMANTHA!’

The fire engine’s siren was getting closer, its wail joined by the familiar weeeeeeow of a patrol car’s siren.

‘SAMANTHA!’

Sick spatters into a pink plastic bowl. Jenny hunches her back and retches again, adding to the mess. Happy Meals don’t look so happy after they’ve been eaten.

The room’s all gloomy, just a nightlight plugged into the wall socket so the monsters can keep an eye on them.

She spits, closes her eyes, and rests her thumping head on the rim of the bowl. Her tummy feels as if it’s been punched. Much worse than when she had to lose weight for the television people.

No one wants to see a Fat Little Girl on their TV screens, darling… She reaches for the bottle of water lying on the floor beside her, pulls the little nipply top up with trembling fingers, and takes a gulp. It tastes sweeter than strawberries.

Mummy’s lying on the mattress, flat on her back.

Jenny knows she’s not asleep. She can tell because of her breathing. Mummy’s lying there, staring at the roof and wishing Daddy was here.

Daddy would make everything better.

Jenny rubs a hand across her mouth and wipes the slimy mess on her jammies. Rinses her mouth out with water and spits it into the bowl. Puts the lid on to keep in the smell. Then closes her eyes, grits her teeth, and pulls herself upright using the bed as a climbing frame. Wobbles on her burning feet. Bites her top lip and squeezes back the tears.

Brave Little Girls don’t cry.

But she wants to. She wants to so much it hurts more than her missing toes.

Jenny climbs up onto the mattress and cuddles in next to Mummy, one arm wrapped around Mummy’s tummy, her head resting in the soft crook of her arm.

A cool hand strokes her forehead. ‘Hey you. Feeling better?’ Brave Little Girls don’t cry. ‘Uh-huh. The andy-bionics make my tummy angry.’

Mummy leans in and kisses her on the top of her head. ‘I know, sweetie, I know. But they make you better.’

Jenny blinks back the tears. ‘Are we going to be dead?’

‘Shhh… Only two more days and the bad men will let us go home. You, me, and Teddy Gordon.’

Jenny raises her head and scowls at the bottom of the bed, where those nasty dead-fish-greedy-crow eyes glint in the dark. Teddy Gordon doesn’t want to go home. Teddy Gordon is right where he wanted to be from the start. Where he can watch them suffer.

‘Samantha? Samantha, can you hear me? I need you to squeeze my hand, OK?’

The ambulance tore through the streets, lights blazing, siren screaming, a patrol car leading the way. Logan sat on the little fold-down seat, one hand wrapped around the seatbelt, the other holding the oxygen mask in place. The vehicle rocked as they swung around the outskirts of Mounthooly Roundabout onto Hutcheon Street.

‘Come on Samantha, squeeze my hand.’

The bag, attached to the drip, attached to Samantha’s wrist, swung back and forth. Heart monitor pinging. Paramedics bent over her, as if they were praying.

Maybe… Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.

‘Female, late twenties, impact trauma and smoke inhalation.’ The doctor hurried along beside the trolley, reading from a clipboard as they charged through Accident and Emergency.

Unhappy people stared at them from the waiting area as they rushed past, Logan limping, trying to keep up. Breath tight in his chest. Like something heavy was sitting on it.

The doctor flipped the page. ‘I don’t like the look of her BP.’

Bang, and they were through a set of double doors — into a scuffed corridor painted in cracked spearmint green. The smell of boiling cabbage and bleach, strong enough to overpower the stench of burning that clung to Logan’s clothes and skin.

Samantha’s face was horribly pale and filthy at the same time.

‘Sir?’

A hand on his arm.

Logan kept going. ‘Sir, you need to come with me, OK?’

He tried to jerk his arm free, but the grip was firm — fingers digging into his bruised skin. ‘I have to-’

‘I know, but she’s in good hands. You need to let them do their jobs.’

He sat on an examination table, a knackered-looking doctor with a name Logan couldn’t remember tapping his chest and back. ‘Well, you’ve probably inhaled enough smoke to do you for the next five years, but other than that…’

‘How is she?’

A sigh. A shrug. A stifled yawn. ‘It’s going to be a while. You should go home. Try to get some rest.’

Go home — how the hell was he supposed to do that?

Logan glanced up from the creaky plastic seat as a nurse hurried by. The soles of her trainers made little screams with every step, breaking the humming stillness of the hospital. ‘Is there anyone-’

‘Sorry, I really don’t know.’ She didn’t even slow down. ‘But-’

‘Sorry.’ And she was gone.

Logan blinked. Shook himself. The corridor was empty, just the purr of the air conditioning and the distant sound of someone coughing.

It was the middle of the night, but you couldn’t tell from the lighting. It was the same twenty-four hours a day, that horrible institutional twilight that went with the sickly-green walls and the cracked terrazzo floor. A gloomy fluorescent-lit world that never let you go. You were born here, you got ill here, you died here.

Bears. Rubble. Suicide. Fire-

‘Dude, you still here?’

Logan shivered. Shifted in his plastic prison. ‘Sorry…’

‘Dude, you should, you know, sleep or something.’ He didn’t look a day over twenty: long hair, piercings in his nose, ears, eyebrow, and lip, a grey overall with a name-badge. He pulled one white earbud out and leant on the handle of the big, scissor-shaped-mop-brush-thing he’d been pushing across the floor. ‘I know it’s a hospital and all, but there’s no way it’s healthy just hanging out here.’

Logan didn’t bother hiding the yawn. ‘What time is it?’

‘Half-five. Seriously: go home, get some sleep.’

Yeah, right. ‘I can’t.’

‘They give you sleeping pills?’

Logan sat back. ‘What? No…’

‘Cutbacks are a bitch.’ He glanced up and down the corridor, then lowered his voice. ‘Dude, if you’re worried about nightmares and that, I’ve got the perfect thing for you.’ He dug into an inside pocket of his overalls, and came out with a little foil blister-pack of pills. Held them out. ‘I’ve got a mate who’s a medical student, fixes me up now and then. Two of these and you’ll be out like a light.’