Look at it, Alex. Make your choice.
But I couldn’t, even as the air flooded back into my lungs, even as my senses returned. I couldn’t give an answer because right then I didn’t know the truth, I couldn’t make a choice.
I honestly didn’t know which side I’d pick.
Nectar
The vision of the city began to clear, dissolving back into reality like sugar in tea, but the reality was no better than the illusion had been. I blinked the tears from my eyes to see the berserker in front of me, its drooping clown’s face inches from my own, its fingers wrapped around my neck. It was grinning, the lips forced open so wide I thought they must have been stitched that way, nectar still dribbling out between them. Then, with another infant laugh, the creature released its hold on me.
I dropped like a stone, landing on my back and gasping in a lungful of stale air. I clamped my hands to my throat, feeling the ridge of bite marks there. There was no blood, the nectar had seen to that, but the whole side of my neck and face was itching madly, as though somebody was running a feather duster down the inside of every vein.
Simon was beside me, his back arched in agony. My entire upper body was throbbing, as though I’d been cooked alive in the flames of my hallucination, but somehow I found the strength to sit up and focus on what was happening.
The berserker seemed to have forgotten all about us. It bounded down the platform, running on all fours like an orang-utan as it closed in on the fleeing inmates. It was on them in seconds, swinging its hammer fists in a horizontal arc and knocking the blond kid and his quiet friend away. They rolled over the edge of the platform like rag dolls, accompanied by the clack of breaking bones.
The sight of them on the lines made me remember Zee. I scrambled across the concrete on my knees, peering over the edge of the platform to see a motionless shape below. The lower part of his face was a mask of blood, but I could tell by the pale blue eyes it was Zee. They were open, and they weren’t blinking.
He must have hit the electrified rail. I knew it. For a second I didn’t feel anything, then a blinding flash of white light popped in the centre of my head, expanding hot and fast like a supernova. Not him, I screamed inside. Not him, not Zee. NOT ZEE! With each plea the flare of the supernova darkened, the nectar numbing the emotions the way it was supposed to, killing the sadness the same way it killed the physical pain. I let my guard drop, willing the poison in, urging it on so I wouldn’t have to deal with the truth of what lay before me, the body broken and slumped on the tracks.
The body that was moving.
‘Gonna kneel there all day,’ came a whisper of a voice, strained as though he had been badly winded, ‘or do you think maybe you could give me a hand?’
The words flushed the nectar from my head, leaving me with nothing but a blinding pulse of agony, so deep that it felt as if it had always been there. But, more than that, I felt joy. The sensation was so strong that pearls of tears clustered in my eyes. I looked at Zee open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and my expression must have been a sight because he laughed.
‘Jesus, Alex, close your mouth before you drool on me,’ he said, glancing at the rail beside him, the one he had missed by a hair’s breadth.
I cast a look over my shoulder just to make sure the berserker hadn’t changed its mind. It had pinned the Skull against a wall, its massive hands held out either side of it to stop the kid from running. Not that he was going anywhere. He was hunkered into a ball, his arms hanging uselessly by his side, no blood left in his face as he waited for the monster to attack.
I heard a distant squeal, the rattle of the tracks. The air was trembling, as if it was scared of the bullet of metal and glass that was tearing this way. Not wasting another second, I eased myself over the platform and dropped into the pit between the rails, grabbing Zee under the armpits.
‘Oh crap,’ he said as I was hoisting him up. I followed his line of sight to see that the tunnel was growing lighter, two headlights visible and getting bigger with terrifying speed. I threw Zee up towards the platform but his foot caught on the nearest rail and he cried out in pain. I lost my grip and he slipped back into the pit. I took him by the scruff of the neck, using the last of my strength to hurl him upwards just as the train exploded out of the tunnel. I crouched, the sheer velocity of the oncoming engine almost enough to make me drop down dead from fear. In the blink of an eye it had reached me, and as I leapt for safety I saw the driver’s face, inches away, frozen into a rictus of panic.
I almost made it, ninety per cent of me over the threshold of the platform. But the train was too fast, clipping my legs at forty miles per hour. I cartwheeled like a spinning top, the world unravelling as I flipped end over end and came crashing to a halt at the foot of the stairs. Even when I stopped the world was still moving, my brain a gyroscope that threatened never, ever to calm. I screwed my eyes shut, feeling like I was on a white-knuckle ride at a leisure park, my stomach threatening to hurl even though it was empty.
Through the confusion I heard the berserker’s spine-chilling laughter and I forced myself to look. The beast was still in the far corner, although the view was spinning so much that I could barely tell which end of the platform was which. It now had the Skull clasped between its bulging palms, and for a bizarre moment I thought it was kissing the kid. Then I realised its embrace was something far worse.
The berserker had its jaws locked around the boy’s throat, its blunt teeth in his flesh. There was blood dripping down the kid’s prison overalls, but even from where I was lying I could see that it was black, not red. The nectar dripped onto the floor, forming a pool beneath the freak and its prey. It might have just been my imagination, but it looked different from the nectar I’d seen back in Furnace, the poison that had been pumped into me by the warden. The flecks of colour in the darkness weren’t silver and gold but red, like splinters of rubies.
‘You seein’ that?’ Simon said, and I realised he was kneeling beside me, one hand on my shoulder. Zee was crawling towards us, the strength returning slowly to his limbs but his face as pale as wet paper. ‘What’s it doing?’
‘Feeding,’ I said, although I knew this wasn’t true.
‘Can you walk?’ Simon asked. I nodded, but to be honest I wasn’t sure if I could move at all. My legs felt like rubber that had been stretched too far, still no pain as such, just that infuriating itch. ‘We should get out of here before that thing finishes doing whatever it’s doing.’
With a sucking sound that reminded me of a foot being wrenched from mud the berserker pulled its teeth free of the kid’s neck. The wound that it had left was as black as pitch, a ring of ragged holes that reached from ear to shoulder, reminding me of a shark bite. The red-flecked nectar was still dripping, but it looked like it was dripping upwards as well as to the floor below. I blinked in disbelief, squinting into the shadows to see that it wasn’t leaking from the boy’s neck at all. It was spreading beneath his skin, radiating outwards like channels of dirty water beneath ice.
Is that what it had done to me? No, it had bitten me but it hadn’t pumped me full of nectar, not like this. I’d have felt it.
The Skull, still held by the berserker, began to tremble, his entire body rocked by spasms so violent that I thought he was going to shake himself to pieces. His veins were pulsing with the nectar inside them, resembling a cobweb of black lines that slowly spread over his face and beneath the collar of his overalls. He thrashed for a moment longer, then he arched backwards, unleashing a desperate, deafening howl at the ceiling. His eyes snapped open and I could see that they were black wells, so deep and so dark that they could have been hollow pits inside his face.
The Skull’s cry went on for what felt like forever, filling the platform with white noise. Then his head lolled on his shoulders, his eyes looking right at me. I stared into those sockets as tears of ink drew down his cheeks, black blood leaking from his nose and joining the fluid that gushed from his mouth. It looked as if he had been pumped full of nectar
, so much so that it had split open his skin, gushing out of every pore.
The berserker laughed again, then it hoisted the Skull over its shoulder as though the boy was nothing but a sack of meat. With a single leap it threw itself over the platform and back towards the stairs, not even sparing us a look as it crouched and propelled itself upwards, landing on the top step.
It paused there for a second, as if to get its bearings, and as it did so the Skull lifted his head and gazed down the stairs through those blood-blackened eyes. I could see the fabric of his overalls stretch and split as the limbs inside grew, his fingers bulging out joint by joint like sausages fattened and flyblown. His face too was almost unrecognisable, swollen like a month-old corpse.
But even though the kid had been disfigured beyond repair, even as his face began to warp and split like old wood, there was no denying the expression there. His eyes, as dark as they were, were hungry. And his mouth was twisted upwards manically, the lips drawn, teeth glinting against the nectar.
He was smiling.
Feeding
We sat at the foot of the stairs long after the slap of the berserker’s footsteps had faded, long after we heard the last echo of its sinister toddler’s giggle ebb from the passageways above us. We sat there in silence, trying to make sense of what we’d seen, trying to get our heads round this bizarre new twist.
The platform was deathly silent, no sign of life from the two other inmates who’d been knocked onto the tracks. Zee had been lucky, and I offered a silent prayer. It was about time we’d had a little luck. The angry girl was peeking out from the doorway of the coffee shop, but there was no sign of the other civilians.
‘We should probably go,’ Zee said. He was sitting on the bottom step rubbing his right leg. His new jeans had been torn open but I couldn’t see any blood there, just a bruise that was blossoming on his calf.
‘Go where?’ I asked, struggling to find the strength to move my mouth. My neck was stinging furiously where I had been bitten, as if I’d been rolling in nettles. The sensation was migrating down my right arm, the skin there tender to the touch.
Nobody answered. What could they say? I mean, if Furnace had sent in his berserkers, freaks like the one that had just been down here, then we wouldn’t be safe anywhere. Hell, nobody would be safe with those things running amok. I thought about my vision, the image of the city in flames, tried to work out what Furnace had been talking about. What had he said?
‘The war begins this morning,’ Simon whispered, as if reading my mind. I looked at him and he glanced back at me almost shamefully.
‘You saw it too?’ I asked.
‘Saw what?’ Zee said as Simon nodded. ‘What did I miss?’
‘Trust me,’ said Simon. ‘You don’t wanna be part of this club.’ He looked up the stairs, then at me. ‘You think what he said was true? About the city, about the war?’
‘Guys!’ Zee snapped.
‘We had a vision,’ I explained. ‘It was Alfred Furnace, talking to us, I don’t know how, exactly.’
‘The nectar,’ Simon interrupted. ‘He talks to us through the nectar, I guess.’
‘It’s like he’s right there, inside my head,’ I said. ‘Like he’s in there screaming. It’s not possible, but that’s what it’s like. It feels like he could just dig his fingers into my brain and make me do anything he wanted.’
‘Only he can’t do that, right?’ Zee said. ‘Otherwise he’d have just killed you. Made you commit suicide or something. He may be talking to you, but he can’t control you.’
‘Right,’ I muttered back, unconvinced.
‘Anyway, what did you see?’ Zee asked.
‘The city in flames,’ Simon said. ‘Full of monsters. Did you see that freak on the tower, right at the end?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied, picturing the beast as it howled at the streets below, looking like it was ready to tear the world apart brick by brick, bone by bone. ‘Furnace, right? That was one evil-looking hombre.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ Simon went on. ‘If I never have to come face to face with him in the flesh then it will be too soon.’ He turned back to Zee. ‘He said it was our fault that his creatures were loose, our fault that he had to start his war today.’
‘War?’ Zee said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Unless he’s declaring war on us, on the prisoners.’
I tried to think back over my hallucination but it was fragmenting like a dream, erased by consciousness. Maybe Zee was right, maybe that was all he meant – a war against the kids who had escaped from his institution. That had to be it, didn’t it? My head was still reeling and I felt my body give in to gravity, lying back against the stairs. I tried to sit up straight but I just didn’t have the strength. It felt like all my bones had been stolen.
‘He was giving us the same old crap,’ I went on, struggling to find the energy to breathe in. ‘Telling us he’d forgive us if we just gave ourselves in, that we could help him fight, that we could be his new right-hand men, blah blah blah. At least he was slagging off the warden, it was worth it just to hear that. I think that bastard Cross might have had his day.’
I looked at Simon and realised he’d lost even more colour. He flicked me a glance, too quick for me to make out the look in his eyes.
‘He didn’t—’ he began, then stopped and turned away, staring at the wall. I ignored him, feeling my neck turn to jelly, my head dropping against the chipped tiles of the steps. If I could just rest here for a bit then maybe I’d be okay. Or maybe this was it, maybe my body had finally run out of fuel. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if it all ended here, I thought. At least it was quiet, at least I was with friends. I closed my eyes.
‘Did Furnace say anything else?’ asked Zee, making me jump.
‘I don’t think so,’ I slurred, too tired to remember.
‘The tower,’ Simon said. ‘The tower the beast was standing on.’
‘What sort of tower?’ Zee said.
I heard Simon shrug before he said: ‘An office block, in the city. I think it must be his. All kinds of sick stuff going on inside.’
There was more, but I zoned out, my thoughts covered by a pleasant blanket of darkness and quiet. The stinging in my neck and my arm had settled into a deep buzzing pulse which beat in time with my heart. I don’t know how much later it was that I felt hands on me, shaking me hard. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t, the sudden terror of paralysis turning my blood to ice water. I struggled against the grip of sleep, eventually managing to peel my eyelids open. But that was pretty much all I was capable of.
‘You look like crap,’ Zee said.
‘It’s the nectar,’ Simon replied. ‘It’s running out.’
‘What happens if it does?’
‘Bad things,’ Simon said. ‘Seen it happen to the rats, back down in Furnace. If the nectar dries up then all the crap that’s happened, all the wounds and broken bones, fast catches up with you. And Alex here, he’s been beaten to death and back I don’t know how many times. He runs out of nectar, he runs out of time.’
I tried to comment but my words were still locked tight by tiredness. Somewhere in the conversation my eyes had closed again and I hadn’t even noticed. This time the darkness was far from comforting. It felt a bit like I was being buried alive.
‘So what do we do?’ asked Zee, his voice laced with desperation. I realised he had his hand on my head and the touch felt good. ‘I’m pretty sure Mickey-D’s haven’t started offering nectar shakes yet. What do we do?’
‘Something gross,’ Simon said. I heard the scuff of feet as he left the steps, followed shortly by a sound that could have been a lobster claw being pulled from the socket – a disgusting symphony of cracks and slurps and grunts.
‘No way,’ said Zee. ‘That’s just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.’
‘Yeah, but we don’t have a choice,’ Simon said. I heard him swallow something, then gag, then swallow again. ‘If he doesn’t get some more nectar into his system then he’s goin
g to die, if not now then pretty soon. I mean, look at him.’
I sensed Simon standing before me and I felt something drip onto my neck, tickling my skin as it ran beneath my hoodie.
‘Open wide,’ said Simon. I did as I was told, feeling another drip on my chin as he held something over my head. The next drop of liquid struck my tongue, bringing with it the foulest taste I’d ever experienced – as if all the food in a fridge had been left for years until it was covered in mould and putrefied to a mush; a liquefied mess of sour, lumpy milk and maggot-infested beef. I felt my throat close up, my stomach heaving, but Simon held my mouth open with one hand and kept pouring in whatever it was he had in the other.
I swallowed, only to stop myself from choking. The instant I did the disgusting taste was forgotten as my brain recognised what the substance was. My pulse shifted up a gear, hammering in my ears. Even though my eyes were still closed my vision went blacker, tiny pinpoints of golden light sparking like exploding stars against the night.
It was nectar. Somehow, Simon was feeding me nectar.
It hit my stomach like a living thing, like it had a mind of its own and knew exactly where to go. It felt like it channelled itself instantly through my gut and into my arteries, lining them with lightning and bringing my exhausted muscles back to life. The wound in my neck was on fire, although burning with power, not pain. The sensation seemed to spread down my right arm, all the way to my fingers, as if the veins there had been stretched and widened to hold as much of the poison as possible.
I gulped harder, craving the liquid that filled my mouth, like this was my first glass of water after a month in the desert. I didn’t care about the taste, I just wanted more of it – it filled me up like fuel, my body an engine suddenly gunning and ready to go.
I sat upright with a choked growl, opening my eyes and looking through the pulsing black veins of my retinas to see a severed limb over my head. I recognised the boy who held it, but all memories were obliterated by the need for nectar. I lashed out at him, grabbing the arm and pressing my face to the leaking veins, sucking the nectar out with relish. In seconds it was dry, and with another guttural roar I leapt to my feet, pouncing on the corpse of the beetle-black berserker and tearing into its cold carapace.