S.O.S

  “It’s cost me all my friends. They don’t talk to me, I can just hear them, like they’re having conversations all around me and I can’t cut them out. Then, a few days ago I met someone called Zack. Don’t ask me how I know, but the moment I saw him I knew he was dead. He’s been following me around; he was in the café when we first met up – I couldn’t get rid of him. That’s why I was acting so strange. He’s not here now; I haven’t seen him since our meeting with that priest, but he’s like a real person, he speaks to me and everything...”

  She stopped talking and kept her eyes tight shut.

  “So he’s a ghost?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Does he move things?”

  She snapped them open and looked at Dev. “I saw him move a menu and he made my keys disappear when he picked them up.”

  “Wow,” Dev murmured. “He must occupy some kind of alternative energy field that we can’t see.”

  “You mean...” She stared at him amazed. “You mean you believe me?”

  Dev said; “I wouldn’t go that far...”

  “Right,” she said miserably, “my mum thinks I’m mad, and you do too.” She felt the sting of tears as she said those last words and screwed her eyes shut again, even tighter this time so he wouldn’t see the tears. Don’t cry, she told herself, you never, ever cry.

  Dev looked at her, and immediately knew how alone she must feel and how frightened she was. He had never seen anyone so beautiful and so sad. Leaning forward he brushed her hair off her face. Molly felt the gesture and leaned into him expecting a kiss. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes again and looked at him.

  “My world is crashing towards an ice age and yours is full of dead people. I don’t care who thinks you’re mad” he said, “they think I’m mad too. We can be mad together.” He jumped off the wall.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  *

  Zack sat back and stared at the screen. He was fading; the effort of turning it on and operating the key board had zapped all his ghostly being. It was worth it though; he knew he’d been right about the light. It was all connected – there was something going on.

  He left the site open and stood up just as a flash light shone in the darkened corridor outside. He stepped to one side as the door was opened.

  “Blooming students.” he heard the same security guard he’d seen earlier mutter, “Always leaving the blooming machines on – no sense of value.” The guard came across and peered at the screen. “North Blooming Korea,” he said, “What they up to now?” He squinted at the news article on line, but his eyes weren’t very good and he couldn’t properly see so he shut down the machine and made his way, led by the torch beam back to the door. He closed it behind him and thought he felt a brief gust of icy air as he did so. He shivered.

  Zack moved unseen out of the building and moments later was gone.

  CHAPTER 8 - Sunan International Airport, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

  The airport security guard at the departure zone was young and inexperienced. He’d been put on baggage scanning and he gazed at the screen intensely, scrolling through endless purses and satchels, looking for the smallest sign of anything suspicious. He paid no attention to the passengers, unlike his more seasoned colleagues, who checked the queue for pretty girls. He remained completely focused on his job. He therefore missed altogether the dark haired man waiting in line to be scanned.

  Not that there was anything unusual about that, the man seemed entirely unremarkable at first glance. It was only when you looked closely did you see that he was in peak physical condition, his arms gave it away, lean and muscular, and so did the ridged muscles of his abdomen barely disguised beneath a loose fitting tee shirt. The young man possessed an unnatural calm and stillness.

  The young man’s bag, an elegant yet subtly designed briefcase went through the scanner though he himself did not, discreetly flashing a pass at the guard before passing through unchallenged. They had been expecting him; they had been notified by the SSD. The young guard however, missed this as the dark haired man’s bag was being scanned in its turn. He sat bolt upright and in a panic, pressed the alert button under his desk.

  Instantly there were armed police at the entrances and exits and the security manager came rushing over to see what the problem was. The guard nervously pointed to the screen where the contents of the man’s bag were on display. His supervisor shook his head and nodded at the young dark haired man who had been let through security. He then waved the bag through.

  The young man collected his bag off the conveyor belt and carried on to the international departure lounge as if nothing had happened. The police dispersed and the new, naïve security guard was relieved of his duties for the day.

  The young man bought a newspaper and sat with his case on his lap, waiting. The call came to board and he moved swiftly through to the departure gate. He took his seat in first class, placing his bag directly above him and settled in for the long haul journey ahead. A woman moved towards his row and checked her ticket then she sat next to him. She was slim and blonde, smartly dressed – some up and coming company hotshot he guessed.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but I believe that I asked if I could have this row to myself.”

  The woman looked at him as she was loading her bag into the overhead locker.

  “The plane is full,” she said, “this seat is the one they gave me.”

  He looked at her. The cut of her suit disappointed him, uniform and unimaginative. Her body language was assertive and it annoyed him. She squeezed into the seat next to him and began fiddling with her safety belt. Better to pretend to be asleep rather than have to suffer an unwanted and almost certainly tedious conversation, he thought. He closed his eyes and despite the safety briefing in Korean and English and the take-off, to all intents and purposes, the young, handsome man in seat 2A was asleep.

  As the plane settled into its thirty thousand feet, the woman beside him looked over at his still form, pleased that he didn’t snore. She wanted her magazine and so stood and reached up to get something out of her suitcase, first needing to push the man’s bag out of her way.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a cold voice from below said as her fingers made to brush the surface of the man’s briefcase. The tone was casual but she could detect the faintest undercurrent of menace. She glanced down and met the cold, calculating grey eyes. They glittered, suddenly alive and alert. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she froze.

  “I...I presumed you were asleep.” Something chilled her about this man.

  “Never presume,” he said. He moved swiftly and was up out of his seat in seconds, lifting his case from the hold above and placing it now between his legs before settling back in for the journey. The woman settled down too, but nervousness had taken hold and she couldn’t relax.

  Ten minutes later she spoke to the stewardess and five minutes after that she moved seats. Miraculously, for a full plane, they found her somewhere else to sit.

  *

  Heathrow Airport, London

  Zack watched the plane touch down at Heathrow, a Lufthansa Air flight that taxied across the runway. He’d never been on a plane before; this was going to be a first. He was excited, but he was confused about the physical and spiritual state he was in. He felt like he was half in this world and half in another world altogether. He supposed he was between the living and the dead, but whatever it was, it was pretty weird.

  He knew that he was able to move things if he focused hard enough, which was quite ghostly, but it drained him. Sometimes he could pass through doors and he was clearly invisible to everyone but Molly and yet he had to travel just like every other rotten punter – there was no teleporting or transporting himself with his mind. That sucked. Still, if he could get on the plane and hang out in first class for a while without being noticed then he guessed being dead wasn’t that bad.

  Zack entered the main body of the airport,
dodging excitable families on their way to their holidays and walked straight through airport security, circumnavigating the scanner. He wasn’t sure if that would sense him and he didn’t intend to take the chance.

  He looked up at the departures board, finding that he had time to kill before he left, so he meandered around the shopping area and decided that he would help himself to someone’s iPhone. He was used to taking what he wanted; that had been the pattern of his life. But now, even if he managed to lift the phone through intense focus, he had nowhere to put it – or at least he had nowhere to put it that would render it invisible. Or did he? Zack decided that he needed to experiment. Standing by a lipstick display in the perfume hall at duty free, he dipped his hand into the half open, expensive leather handbag of a young woman with long brown hair who needed a lipstick to match her colouring. He willed himself to lift out the phone. He stared at it and focused hard.

  Moments later he had it and was slipping it into his pocket. He felt giddy so went across to the seats to sit down. If the phone hadn’t disappeared inside his pocket, in the same way that he disappeared then he was done for. He sat, waiting for someone to notice a floating iPhone, but no-one did. There was nothing – no response - not a zit. He obviously rendered everything on his person completely invisible. Result.

  Zack’s flight was called – he walked to the gate and dodged his way to the front of the queue. He strolled onto the plane, careful not to jostle anyone in case they felt his presence and waited, just inside the entrance to the plane until everyone was seated. As the stewardess began her safety announcement, Zack slipped into one of the seats in first class and relaxed back. He smiled to himself, relaxing in more luxury than he’d ever experienced before. There were at least some benefits to being dead.

  *

  London

  Molly was on her way to Dev’s house and thinking about Zack. She was worried that she hadn’t seen him for some time now, not since the meeting with Father Tom in fact. Her forehead creased with lines as she fretted over what had become of him. She hoped he was okay, but then she told herself this was irrational because he was dead and nothing could physically hurt him and then she felt half annoyed with herself that she was even worrying at all. He wasn’t exactly a friend – how could she be friends with the walking dead? And he hadn’t been especially nice, mocking her – acting all cool and aggressive. Yet there was something about Zack that she couldn’t quite understand; a fascination that drew her to him. She sighed, forcing herself to snap out of it. She’d thought this all before; now her mind was just going round and round in circles.

  As she approached Dev’s house, Molly grew more excited and more than a little nervous. She didn’t really know what to expect after their last meeting. Did he like her or was she imagining it? Perhaps Dev just wasn’t really interested in relationships; perhaps he was too obsessed with his ‘end of the world’ theory to think about Molly in that way? And yet he did the nicest things for her and understood her like no-one else did. Confused; that was how she felt – very confused.

  She turned into his road and approached his front door, knocking and standing outside, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. The door opened and his tall frame leaned out, his face breaking into a smile. He stooped still further and suddenly kissed her, his lips brushing her own.

  “Hi,” he said when he broke away, stepping aside to let her indoors.

  “Oh, erm, hi...” Molly was blushing.

  “Dev, who is it?” came a woman’s voice from inside the house, interrupting their private moment together.

  “It’s my friend Molly, Mum,” Dev replied, shooting an apologetic look at Molly as he did so. “Sorry,” he said in a hushed tone, “I thought they’d have gone by the time you arrived.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Molly replied, reaching out and squeezing his hand to reassure him.

  “Well for goodness sake Dev, bring her in!” called his Mum from the kitchen. “Don’t leave the poor girl standing in the hall in the cold!”

  Dev looked almost pained, unwilling to move.

  “Dev, Dev, Dev!” His mother appeared at the kitchen doorway. She was dressed in a turquoise sari and had yellow rubber gloves on. “Where are your manners?!” She stopped and Molly saw her face change. There was surprise and an edge of disappointment in her look.

  “Please bring Molly in to say hello,” she said, but it was less insistent than it had been.

  Molly heard Dev sigh as she followed him into the kitchen. She stood awkwardly just inside the door while his mum looked at her, a fixed smile on her face and his dad, half concealed behind his newspaper, lowered it and glanced at her. Molly tried to pull her tee shirt down over her denim shorts and wished that she’d worn anything other than those with black tights and biker boots. A dress would have been good maybe?

  Eager to break the silence Dev cleared his throat.

  “Erm, Mum, Dad, this is Molly,” he blurted, “we’re off out.”

  His parents said nothing, but merely exchanged a look, and in that moment Molly realised that she wasn’t what they had expected or hoped for.

  “Nice to meet you,” Molly said nervously. Dev’s dad nodded and raised his newspaper again. From behind it he made a comment in Hindi and Dev’s mum responded sharply. Dev turned and taking Molly’s hand left the kitchen.

  In the hall he grabbed his coat and without saying anything to his parents, he opened the front door and ushered Molly out.

  “Bye....” She called over her shoulder. Dev shut the door firmly behind them. He marched up the road, holding Molly’s hand and she had to walk fast to keep up with him. Halfway up the road, Molly stopped and turned to face him. She fixed him with a furious stare.

  “What was all that about?” she demanded, hurt and bewildered.

  “I’m sorry,” Dev said. He dug his hands in his pockets.

  “They didn’t like me, did they?”

  He said nothing.

  “What did your Mum say?”

  Again he said nothing.

  “Dev?!”

  He faced her. “Look, my parents are old fashioned and out of touch with reality. They expected you to be Indian that’s all. They were just surprised.”

  “And disappointed.”

  “They don’t like me mixing with girls from other cultures. It’s ridiculous! The whole thing is ridiculous! It would have been fine if they’d gone out when they were supposed to!”

  Molly stared at him. “Are you trying to keep me secret?” She shook her head. “You’re ashamed of me aren’t you?” her voice rose.

  Dev tried to backtrack quickly.

  “No, of course not! It’s just that my parents don’t see things the way I do, they...” But he didn’t get to finish his sentence. Molly turned on her heels and stormed away.

  Dev didn’t go after her. He knew that anything he said now would just make the situation worse.

  He sighed, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. Apart from maths and physics, why did everything have to be so complicated?

  *

  The two police officers drove through the north London streets, siren blaring. They had been called out to investigate a disturbance that had been reported on one of the housing estates – these things needed to be put down quickly before they got out of hand, especially here. This estate was notorious, ever since the riots fifteen years ago when several young people had been killed. It wasn’t a good place to be and both officers were nervous.

  As they turned into the estate they saw a hooded youth with a brick in his hand. He was in front of a ground floor flat, shouting at the people inside. The driver cut the engine and they eased into a space at the back of the estate, unseen. One of the policemen climbed out, the other radioed for back up.

  The boy lobbed the brick, smashing the window clean through.

  “Come on out! Come on, come and fight!” The youth was taunting, pacing like a killer cat ready to pounce. From behind the car the first officer crouched down.
There was something in the air, something sinister. This wasn’t just a disturbance; this was something else, he could feel it. He held his breath.

  Moments later all along the row of flats on the ground floor doors began to open and hooded teenagers emerged from inside, some carrying knives, others bottles; petrol bombs. Most of them had their faces covered. The taunting youth darted towards a side alley and disappeared. Still squatting, the officer outside the car moved back round to the passenger side and eased open the handle. No-one had spotted them yet.

  Then from behind the car, on the opposite side of the road still more youths emerged from the alleyways and paths, these differently clothed in balaclavas, the mark of a different gang, a rival gang. The officer crawled inside the car. He looked at his colleague; he was sweating, it ran down the side of his face.

  “Christ...” he murmured as the horrific realisation that they would be caught in the crossfire dawned on them both.

  Suddenly a bottle flew through the air, across the roof of the car and landed about ten feet from them. It burst into flames and a roar went up. Missiles began to fly, there was shouting and bricks hit the car. People were running, a car nearer the flats was torched, the flames inciting more violence. Both officers crouched down in the car, still, sweating as the crowd closed the gap between them.

  Then the mood changed again, swiftly and without warning. One of the youths motioned to others of his gang and their focus altered. They had spotted the police car. A shout went up.

  “Filth! Filth!”

  The car began to rock as bricks and rocks hit the bonnet and the roof. The windscreen shattered. Moments later the crowd was upon them, rocking the car. Someone carried a lighted torch.

  A huge boy, head wrapped in a black scarf smacked on the window of the car with a baseball bat, threatening. The smacking became more and more insistent, the rocking more violent. Neither officer moved as the car swung back and forth. The boy raised the bat high above his head ready to smash it through the side window.