The Last Days Read online

  Sir Justice’s dirt-encrusted hair drifted across his unshaven face and his hazel eyes peered through binoculars at the carriage, the long barrel of a hunting rifle hanging across his lap.

  “What do you see, Wilfred?”

  Sir Justice smiled. Sometimes having a telepath leak into your mind was like leaping into a cool stream, all at once overwhelming and invigorating. He looked towards the city where he could see Jon Way waiting in the watchtower.

  You tell me, Jon, you’re the magician, he thought.

  Jon Way’s words formed like gentle birdsong in Sir Justice’s ears: “Our visitor’s mind is clouded like all the other refugees, scarred by the death of his family. He’s German, I think, and possibly a little schizophrenic. Further than that, I cannot penetrate.”

  Sir Justice grumbled and snapped the binoculars back into place on his customised belt. Careful not to cause another rock fall, he scrambled down to a nearby outcrop, knee deep in snow.

  What’s his name? he thought.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Sir Justice felt the hesitation in his friend’s tone and his smile turned sour. Of course, why wouldn’t I?

  “Klaus,” Jon replied. “Klaus Gravenstein.”

  Sir Justice turned and looped a harness around his legs, leaning his full weight into another gust of wind that threatened to blow him over. Been a long time since we had a visitor from overseas.

  “Yes, it has,” the words Jon Way planted in his head hardened, their colour darker. “Probably best you get prepared though, just in case.”

  Aye, Jon, I hear you, Sir Justice thought. Don’t get your pantaloons in a twist. I’m going, I’m going.

  And with that he took a step back from the mountainside and jumped.

  ………..

  Klaus’s body quietly mimicked the rhythm of the rocking train as it slowed to a halt. The carriage door opened automatically and he climbed outside, once again cradling his sore arm. Bending down, he picked up a handful of snow and buried his face in it. He shook as droplets trickled down the back of his neck. He then looked up, slowly aware of the cold shadow surrounding him. His eyes widened.

  The huge perimeter wall around the city of Albion seemed to extend for miles - a hotchpotch of ancient, roughly hewn stone bandaged in concrete. A watchtower stood precariously above it, but beyond that all he could see was the tip of a giant broadcast tower - a majestic transmitter sloping towards the clouds.

  “Hello?” Klaus shouted. “Is anybody there?”

  His question unanswered, he turned his attention to the city gates, flanked by pillars, grey and cold. Brown stains scored years of damp and decay into the walls and a pipe spewed a foul stench into the air.

  The legends have been kinder to the fortress of Albion, Klaus thought.

  The doors themselves betrayed small hint of welcome, their thick beams held together by rusting steel plates. Three times Klaus’s size, they appeared to have no lock, no handle. Metres above them sat a copper roof, beaten together like a misshapen beak and bolted onto the stone. It shielded a plasma screen the size of a cinema’s. A robotic voice issued from a bank of speakers below it. “Please indicate language: English, Espagne, Deutche, Francais...”

  “English,” Klaus spluttered. “English is fine.”

  As much as the computer’s singular tone un-nerved him, the gate tower storeys above concerned him more. The light caught momentarily on two small white circles within its recess. And then, just as quickly, they disappeared. Was that a pair of glasses? Klaus thought.

  The wind blew and a thin rain began to fall. The Voice stayed fastidiously quiet.

  “Please approach the gate, stopping at the spot marked X,” the computer instructed.

  Klaus shuffled towards a large red ‘X’, half buried in the snow. His boots slid easily into two indentations, obviously prepared to guide visitors into exactly the position where the...

  “Ouch!”

  Klaus lifted his right foot in time to see a thick needle disappearing into the ground. It had pierced straight through the sole of his boot, drawing blood.

  The computer spoke again in the same implacable manner, no longer merely addressing Klaus but also, he sensed, its invisible masters. “Blood sample successfully taken.”

  Klaus hopped, inspecting the frayed rubber of his boot: “I guess this must be your famous ‘warm British hospitality’, yes?”

  “Your blood sample will now be analysed. Please wait for confirmation of results.”

  On the screen an animated bar now appeared, its progress obviously linked to that of the blood test being conducted below. Klaus imagined ghouls and goblins peering over bubbling test tubes in the caves beneath him, their little bodies shuffling in white lab coats as they inspected his blood.

  He stepped back from the ‘X’ and rubbed at his hair. This place is really starting to get to me, he thought.

  Klaus gazed at the watchtower as a falcon flew above him. “Is there anyone here who’s, like, human?” he asked.

  The computer replied: “If you are tested clear of any infection you will be allowed entrance to the city.”

  And if not? Klaus wondered. He shuffled nervously, still staring up at the rickety shack, locked in shadow, as the progress bar on the computer screen reached its conclusion.

  “Analysis complete - blood sample shows traces of Ebola virus EB13.”

  And again, yes! A pair of spectacles broke through the darkness of the gate tower. Klaus began to make out the details of a man’s face: a long nose, lank hair. And then he heard him. To Klaus’s ears he seemed to moan bitterly: “The blood plague.”

  And, as if his world had flipped on its axel, Klaus remembered that he was going to die.

  ………..

  Deep in the heart of the city, tears began rolling down Neon Way’s cheeks and she turned away from the monitors, gripping her teddy bear even tighter. She felt her companions’ unease and confusion. Their eyes burning holes into her back.

  “Daddy?” she sniffed. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

  But this time Jon Way didn’t answer. Instead, he sat silently in the watchtower, with little but his small, mirrored glasses piercing the gloom.

  He had been listening intently, searching what he could of the visitor’s thoughts. Unlike Klaus, he knew there were no gremlins working beneath them for he had designed much of the computer’s security system. But the thought amused him. Despite himself, he was beginning to like this German. A dangerous impulse he knew the people of Albion could not afford.

  ………..

  The television above the gates was screening images of the blood plague but Klaus needed no explanation of the suffering involved. His mind stretched back again to the cabin where his mother lay, blood pooling from her eyes, her nose, her throat.

  “Death by EB13 is slow and painful. There is no cure. The risk of infection is high,” the electronic voice reminded him.

  The computer still had no apologetic tone. Instead, Klaus noted, it dealt its damning prognosis with the bedside manner of a brick to the skull. He allowed his temper to rise into a dramatic fury.

  “Let me in!” he roared and he began thumping the doors, the impact of his knuckles barely making a sound. “Show yourselves!”

  CRACK!

  The sound of a gunshot echoed through the valley. Klaus span around as a bullet whizzed past his ear and lodged itself unspectacularly in the pillar’s cement.

  “No, what is this?” he yelled. “I came here to be saved! Not shot!”

  Scanning the horizon for the source of the bullet his eyes rested on a strange, silhouetted figure flying towards him.

  Could that be a man? he thought.

  The rain beat hard on the hang glider. Sir Justice watched through the rifle’s sight and grit his teeth.

  “Balls!” he muttered. His gun swayed nervously in the wind but he steadied it with the control of a considerable marksman. His aim fell again on the visitor.

  CRACK! />
  Another bullet entered the door above Klaus and he raised his arms above his head, screaming, “No, don’t shoot! I surrender! Don’t shoot!”

  But Sir Justice flew closer, reloading his rifle under tarpaulin wings. “Bollocks and balls!” he shouted angrily, his bristled chin brushing against the gun as he lined up his next shot. He stared down the barrel through a pair of ridiculous looking flying goggles.

  Panicked now, Klaus ran, desperate for cover.

  There wasn’t any.

  CRACK!

  A fresh gust of wind slammed into the hang glider from below and this time the bullet flew wildly off target, bouncing off a wall and smashing an oil lamp that hung from the corrugated iron roof of the gate tower.

  The man’s voice from within the shack now rang clear. “Hellfire, Wilfred! Who are you aiming for, him or me?”

  His face appeared from the blackness as he yelled. Framed in long fair hair, Jon Way’s eyes were hidden behind spectacles but his frustration was clearly visible as he dusted broken glass from his denim shoulders.

  “Compose yourself for pity’s sake!” he hollered into the wet air. “You’re meant to be the city’s sheriff, not some psychotic vandal!”

  “All right, all right!” the glider screamed back. “You try shooting someone while flying through a force ten gale, it’s nae easy you know!”

  Klaus shook his head. This was it. He had finally come to the end of his journey. He knew what must be done. He had no fear of death, he reminded himself. Yet the bile rising in his throat did not taste sweet.

  His hands shook as he pressed them together. “Please, have mercy,” he begged and he sank to his knees, staring up at the tower. “I only came to see Lord Truth. Where is he?”

  Jon Way leant on the wall of the shack, his hair bristling in the wind as his glasses were spattered with rain.

  Klaus turned towards the glider, his mind racing, his ears alert for the next shot.

  “Where is Lord Truth? Our Saviour, the man sent to rescue us all. He’s here, isn’t he?” he whimpered.

  Sir Wilfred Justice hung his head for a grim moment. “Have you nae heard, Mister Gravenstein?” he shouted, his finger curling around the rifle’s trigger for a final time.

  “He’s dead.”

  Chapter Three

  SIX SLEPT and as she slept Tucker watched, lights blinking green and red on the control panel behind him. Here in the heart of the broadcast tower he was lord and master, or so he thought, yet somehow he had been usurped last night and left to sleep on the couch.

  The 15 year old’s eyelids drooped below their normal half-closed level, his feet propped up on an old record box as he sat in a creaking swivel chair. In a couple of hours he’d broadcast the day’s first repeat of The Jason King Show. Until then the inhabitants of Albion could wake up to the kicks and slaps of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon.

  Even dozing with his back to the screens Tucker could follow the movie, he’d seen it that many times. His hero Jim Kelly had just joined Lee on a boat sailing to a kung fu tournament. Tall and considered, Kelly was watching the junks bobbing up and down in Hong Kong harbour.

  “Ghettos are the same all over the world,” Tucker repeated the words on the screen, “they stink. Although not quite as badly as these,” he then added, spearing a fusty sports sock with the tip of his sword.

  Six fidgeted in her sleep, her red hair splayed across his pillows. Her mouth pursed slightly as she caught her breath and a look of concern spread over her pale features. She brought her little finger up to her lips as though she was contemplating biting her nails, but instead dug it into her right nostril. She then relaxed and settled back into her dreams. Tucker had considered filming this moment on one of the cameras that littered the room but decided against it. Six was always picking her nose.

  Once the control hub of the vast tower, Tucker had long ago commandeered the room. Since the knights had returned from their disastrous mission to London, he’d reclaimed it. He had no wish to return to their empty barracks alone, without Lord Truth.

  Tucker glanced at the sword and his pile of white armour, lying discarded in a heap. The shining blade stood out in a room full of televisions and computer equipment. Video racks and mixing desks were draped in dirty laundry and the mattress Six was sleeping on fought for space with cassette cases and acres of cabling. Old posters flapped in the breeze, including the football teams Tucker had tacked to the walls as a child.

  Tucker dropped the weapon and span around to watch Lee demonstrate “the art of fighting without fighting” - coaxing another fighter into a dingy and tying it to the back of the ship.

  The knight’s apprentice chuckled amid the frayed leather of the chair, which rocked underneath his weight as he transferred his feet to the desk. The chair’s vibrations rippled through the floor, causing a trickle of dust to fall from the ceiling of Albion’s theatre below him. Caught in a sliver of light the dirt twinkled like stardust, tumbling past the lighting gantry and velvet curtains, before settling on vacant rows of cushioned seats. The theatre was thick with the stuff, it covered every step and pew. The floor lay cold beneath an inch of it, parting only for the paw prints of mice that criss-crossed the main stage.

  It was from that stage that Jason King used to present his nightly chat show to the world. The theatre had since become an infirmary during the plague years, then a meeting hall. Now it stood empty, the ghost of stale applause hanging from the few speakers left attached to its walls.

  The massive transmitter, its legs pinned to the roof above Tucker’s head, was still capable of broadcasting but there was little point in using it. One of Tucker’s duties was to send out an emergency beacon once a day, patched through the BBC’s dormant World Service. Each night at 8pm any television in Europe that could be powered would again display the face of Jason King, the founder of Albion and all it once was.

  As the static parted he would speak blindly to an audience Tucker doubted to exist at all. His voice a little more sombre, his face a lot older than most would have remembered, the King reported that the city was still operational and welcoming refugees.

  However, he warned that no one suffering the blood plague would be allowed entry and, for all those still struggling to understand the fate of the world, he had few answers. But there was hope.

  A Saviour had been found.

  After that, Tucker could pretty much broadcast whatever film, cartoon or sports game from the tower’s vast library, he wanted. No one else seemed to care how to use the equipment apart from him. Besides, there were very few people paying attention to their TVs in Albion nowadays.

  So Tucker lazily dipped his hand into a paper bag of stale crisps and chomped, as the martial arts champions competed on the film.

  Kelly was fighting in the tournament and had already parried and blocked his opponent’s clumsy punches. He danced like a boxer, shifting his weight before striking with a rising back kick. His foe anticipated the move and ducked but Kelly remained focused, his brown feet constantly bouncing as he selected his next attack.

  A snap punch stunned the opponent but again Kelly kept moving before launching into a devastating roundhouse. The kick almost floored his challenger. Kelly finished him off with a flurry of swinging punches, in a style that was more street fighter than kung fu. Tucker likened it to his own Gi Quon Do technique.

  The knight’s apprentice grinned in admiration and patted his afro hair, leaving traces of fried potato clinging to it. He must have practiced that combination of moves a thousand times.

  Like Kelly, he was no Bruce Lee but he was a good fighter. And he had style. Or, at least, staring down at his suede green trainers, he thought he had. It was hard to maintain a sense of fashion when almost everyone around you was dressed in patched-up dungarees and woollen jumpers.

  Tucker recalled some of his more recent clothing disasters - a custard hoodie and tartan golfing trouser combo had gone down particularly badly. Even Six had laughed at that one, not that she w
as such an amazing dresser. Sometimes she wore the weirdest, ill-fitting things. Yet somehow she always managed to look good in them, at least in Tucker’s eyes.

  He pictured all the knights sitting around Lord Truth one day as he was replicating supplies for them - food, detergent, cosmetics and clothes they had scavenged on a mission to Edinburgh. In his left hand he held a grubby, torn hockey sweater, in his right stars fizzed as its perfected copy began forming.

  “Hey, can I have that one, Master?” Six had asked.

  “Six, are you serious, that thing’ll dwarf you?” Knight Two laughed.

  Six shrugged as Tucker sat down beside her. “Nah, I reckon I can make it work,” she smiled, her eyes sparkling as she watched Lord Truth work, his own face bathed in white, lost in concentration.

  “How the Swiss cheese does he even do that?” Tucker wondered quietly.

  “It’s particle physics, numbnuts!” Knight Five answered, her arms wrapped around her knees. “LT, can I have a new version of that skirt when you’re finished?”

  “He’s manipulating atoms,” Knight One added, “duplicating and refining them, from a strand of fibre up. Boss, can I get that pair of jeans, and some candy too if you’ve got some?”

  “Here,” was all Lord Truth said as he passed Six the new jumper, before gathering up the skirt Knight Five had chosen.

  “Thanks,” Six said and Tucker watched her pull on the huge sweater, a giant red maple leaf on its front, its fabric softer, its stitching tighter, its colours far brighter than its original.

  And somehow - somehow - it suited her.

  Six looked at Lord Truth and beamed.

  “I could do with a working version of that laptop when you’re ready, Master?” Eddie Stobbart, Knight Three then asked.

  “Honestly, what makes you all think you’re so freakin’ special that you deserve all the best supplies in the city?” Tucker said.

  “Easy,” Knight Four answered, already lacing up a fresh pair of trainers. “We’re knights, Tucker, the Knights of Truth. We’ve got an image to uphold.”