Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

She remembered. It was the first time that she had had to remember, a vision possessing a precise and surreal clarity, as indifferent to her as it was to the other three figures at the heart of it. In her mind, silently as a dream, she saw the woman and the man falling one after the other to the roadway, saw the stain on the woman’s blue jacket, the man’s unshakable stillness, his face, and the boy so close, staring at her. She saw this with a shock of unreality, with only the ordinary room, and its arrangement of an ancient wardrobe, chair and bedside table, to remind her how real it was. She stared at the image in her mind, sickened at heart, unbelieving.

She lay back, actually winded, and then felt that the bed was damp.

She touched the warmth in which she was lying and raising her hand into the white light saw a dark liquid on her hands. It was her menstrual blood, not the blood of a wound. It was darker and flowed less freely but had still soaked through her clothes into the bed. She could not understand it, she had not bled for months, had been pleased that she had not bled for months. She had short-circuited her cycle, spiking it with a thin diet and nervous energy, feeling its connective, circular rhythm replaced by the equivalent of a blank sheet of paper, a perfect and disinfected emptiness without the need or the capacity for change. She pushed back the bedclothes and sat up again, scrunching the sheets with her hand to clean it, uncertain what she should do. A giddiness took hold of her. She shook off the mists of sickness, noticed the sour aftertaste of a drug in her mouth, and remembered why she was in this bed.

She had to get out of here. Moving as quickly as she could, she got up, put on and laced up her shoes. As she put on her coat, she again saw the image of the three people in her mind and this time took possession of it angrily, holding onto the fact in its impossibility and extremity. I did that, she told herself. Never forget that. I took those people apart like that. That’s mine, I’m never going to forget that. She looked at the bed with its blankets pulled back to display blood splashed between the ribs of light, dark butterflies on the white sheets.

Like the action of a narcotic, she felt a numbness set in, a severance from the surrounding world. She left the room but then was forced to go into the bathroom next door. She sat on the throne, acutely aware of various wastes purging themselves out of her body and feeling the ache of menstrual cramps. She did not know why she should need to bleed when she had schooled every other need — food or warmth or shelter — down to its fundamentals. She cleaned herself as well as she could when she was finished but could only find a hand towel to soak up the flow of her blood. She washed herself again, almost compulsively, and then, badly dehydrated, drank copious handfuls of water from the tap.

She had no perception of what time it might be, she only wanted to find her backpack and then leave the Temple as soon as she could. She left the bathroom and went down the stairs. Silence was diffused like an undisturbed sleep throughout the darkened building, she could not even hear cockroaches scuttling. She tried the back door but it was locked. The Temple was difficult to get into or out of once the doors were shut against you: it was a place of thick walls, barred windows and strong locks. She stopped outside the office and listened for any sound to suggest there might be someone in there, but heard nothing.

Opening the door carefully, she saw by the streetlights through the bare windows that the room was empty. She found her pack, placed out of sight inside the tiny windowless kitchen. It was open and had been searched, the contents disturbed. As she looked around, she saw a blister packet emptied of all its tablets on the bench next to the sink.

She picked it up. Rohypnol 2 mg. She did not quite laugh as she stared at it. She thought: I need a gun.

She knew things that Graeme did not realise she knew. Under the floorboards in his office, she found his own insurance as he called it: a solitary gun and a good supply of ammunition. She took both, putting the ammunition into her pack after loading the gun with the expertise he had taught her. It was larger and heavier than the one he had originally given her. She weighed the gun in her hand and felt an immediate relief to have it, knowing that, of all things, it was something she could rely on. Because if you can use a gun once, then you know how to use it again. This last thought was a negative whisper in her mind.

The office computer, a powerful and expensive machine, had been left on; its tiny orange lights were intermittent pinpricks in the dark as the monitor slept in power-saving mode. She glanced towards the open door but saw and heard no one. The whole building had a sense of abandonment. Holding onto her gun, she woke the screen and went out on the Net, quickly.

Turtle, are you out there? It’s the Firewall. Are you there?

Firewall??? I’ve been waiting 4 HOURS 2 hear from u Where areu???

You don’t want to know. Out here. With a gun in my hand. For real.

I’m holding it right now. I’m holding it because I think I might need to use it. It’s just so strange to know that.

U can’t do that U just can’t

I don’t know what else to do now. I need the protection.

Who from???? They should be afraid of u!!!

There are worse people than me out here, Turtle. And yeah, I am frightened of them. You can believe I am.

I wish I wasn’t stuck here I would help u if I could but I’m stuck Wotare u up 2 now? Can’t I do something?

No, this is not you, this is me. I don’t want you to take this on. But I don’t know. I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got nowhere to go now.

U can go 2 the police

I said before, there’s no point in doing that. Anyway if you do go to the police, all they do is bash you up.

They don’t all do that

The ones I know do. No, I’ve got nowhere to go. Except maybe …

Except maybe where????

Home? It’s the only place left on earth now, isn’t it? And it’s the worst place to be. My brother rang me the other day. He wants me to come home. But if I do go back there now it’s because everything I’ve done has taken me back there, not for any other reason.

You don’t have to go back there do u?

Maybe. If they want me, maybe I will. I was just thinking about it really, that’s all. There just isn’t anywhere else now.

I’ve been thinking all day I don’t believe it was u who did that U

pulled the trigger but your head was somewhere else It has 2 be U

just couldnt do that

No, Turtle. I did do it. And I did it because I thought she was evil. But I woke up just now and all I could see in my head was all that blood and what those people looked like. And I think — I have to think this, don’t I — if that’s what she is, then what about me? Aren’t we both the same now? Aren’t we both killers? I don’t want to be like her. But I am.

So what does that mean? I don’t know where my head is any more.

Everything u say — it all says that u aren’t like that OK??? I knowits not u When I talk 2 u — U are not like that It was some mad thingbut not u

But that mad thing is me. I wonder, would I feel like this if I’d only shot her and not that man? I just don’t know what to think.

As she typed this, Lucy looked up to see the refuge van, with its lights dimmed, drive across the open space at the back of the picture theatre and come to a halt in the shadow of the building.

Got to go. Love you, she added quickly.

No wait Firewall dont do anything stupid U cant Lucy shut down the connection. She saw Graeme’s figure pass the window and knew that she did not have time to get out of the back door. She moved quickly into the auditorium, hoisting her pack and holding the gun ready. Leaving the door slightly ajar, she stood watching through the crack.