Dark Ages. John Pritchard

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СКАЧАТЬ just tingeing her self-pity. Poor Lyn had come in late, and looking knackered (not a word she’d use) – to find Fran on the sofa, as white as a sheet, and Craig with his arm around her. And now here they were, much later, with the second round of coffees still half-drunk. Just like bloody student days again.

      ‘I still think you’d be crazy to go back,’ Craig told her quietly.

      Fran looked at him with narrowed eyes. The bright glare of the strip-light didn’t do him many favours: lining his face, and picking out grey hairs. What was he, thirty-five? Weathered and worn by the gap of years between them. His earnest, grim expression didn’t help; but those pale blue eyes of his were clean and sharp.

      She hadn’t believed he’d wanted to pursue her. Too challenging; too risky. Waiting to be charged at West Down camp, she’d realized that he didn’t know her surname. Well, there was a test of his commitment – and he’d passed it. Made a few discreet enquiries of the MDP who’d nicked her …

      ‘I have to,’ she said flatly – taking a drag as if to set her seal on the matter. The ash flared: hot, defiant. She got a glimpse of Lyn’s discomfort from the corner of her eye, and turned her head aside to breathe the smoke.

      ‘Look at the effect it’s having,’ he persisted. ‘Even now. You go back there again, you’re gonna screw yourself up, Fran. Back into therapy. Is that what you want?’

      ‘Of course I bloody don’t. And I’m not going to. I had a real shock down there: it screwed me up for years. I need to get my head round it. I’ll be all right then.’

      ‘So what about what happened here tonight?’ Lyn said – jumping quickly in between them, but the question was pertinent enough. ‘Was that just in your head?’

      Fran sat back, glowering at Craig. ‘Of course it was.’

      ‘You were hearing voices again.’

      Fran turned her head, and saw how pale Lyn looked. Not just from fatigue; her eyes were big with worry. With her hair tied back, not her usual style, she seemed younger and more vulnerable somehow.

      Fran swallowed. ‘Not like before. No, really. This was just a memory. A flashback.’

      Lyn moistened her lips. ‘Oh, Fran. Don’t you think it might be better if you saw someone?’

      ‘No, I don’t. I’m finished with that, all right? Going to Heyford and Greenham helped. I’m getting it all back into perspective now. And I know I can face up to the Plain. If I don’t, then those flashbacks, those whatever, will just keep coming.’

      There was a pause. Fran drew determinedly on her cigarette. Craig tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table, watching her from under his brows.

      ‘Would it help,’ Lyn ventured slowly, ‘if you told us what you thought you saw, that night?’

      Fran focused again on the shrivelling ash, and felt her skin becoming cold and tight. A vacuum seemed to form inside her belly.

      ‘It might be an idea … Lyn faltered on. ‘You talked about … these things you thought were coming after you.’

      Fran breathed slowly in; then out. She shook her head.

      ‘Oh, Frannie,’ whispered Lyn. ‘Please let us help.’

      For a moment more she wavered. The memory was there at the back of her mind: a dense, amorphous shadow. To speak of it would give it shape – in all its ghastly detail. But the prospect before her was more frightening still: that her friends would take her at her word, and leave her to resist the thing alone.

      Fran crushed her cigarette against the saucer, and looked up. Her expression made Craig reach across and take hold of her hand. Lyn followed suit: grasped Fran’s left hand in both her own and squeezed.

      Just like a séance, Fran thought dimly. And that’s what they were doing, in the end. Summoning spirits. Raising ghosts.

      She opened her mouth, and realized she was on the verge of tears. She sniffed, and swallowed thickly. Then looked from Craig’s set face to Lyn’s – and started talking.

      2

      She’d got as far as Greenlands camp before she paused for breath.

      Her limbs were numb with shock, but they’d kept moving. Adrenaline sang madly through her veins. Her three friends were forgotten; the crash was like the fragment of a dream. The only thing that mattered was the shadow at her heels.

      Glancing back, she’d glimpsed it moving – indistinct and blurred. It had left the road already, and was following her trail onto the range. She’d lost it for a moment, and looked round in utter panic. But then it passed in front of the car headlamps, quenching them like a cloud across the moon.

       Oh God, oh God, oh God.

      The unseen ground was rough and treacherous. Brambles vied with thatchy tufts of grass to bring her down. A tank trail almost tripped her up: as lumpy as a ploughed field in the dark. Whimpering, she picked her way along it – then looked again, and found him gaining ground. Lurching but relentless, like a scarecrow in the starlight. She flailed back onto grass, and kept on running.

      A red light glowed above the nearest trees – a warning beacon, mounted on a flagpole. She’d made for it instinctively, and stumbled on a narrow, northbound lane. Gasping, she had followed that, uphill and round a bend. And Greenlands had been waiting there: as silent as a village of the dead.

      The old camp was disused, its buildings derelict and empty. The road led through the middle, and on up towards East Down. The night was brighter up ahead: the stars like waiting gems above the black lip of the earth. But safety seemed as far away as they did.

      Breathless now, she came up short and forced herself to listen. There was no sound of her pursuer. She could just hear the range flagpole in the distance: its cable striking metal in the cool night breeze. Clink … clink … clink …

      The ground rose up to left and right, and murk had settled thickly in the fold. The way she’d come was as black as the mouth of a tunnel.

      She tried to fill her aching lungs; fighting back the sobs that would have emptied them again. Now that she’d stopped moving, a dozen cuts and bruises were competing for attention – engulfing her in pain and nausea. Her head had started throbbing; it felt like a drill-bit slowly grinding on the bone.

      Her face was warm and sticky. Reaching up, she touched her cheek, and felt the slime of blood.

      She wavered, shivering with shock – and heard the whine of engines. Something moving slowly through the night. Distance and direction were impossible to judge. She looked ahead, along the road: hoping for the blessed flash of headlights. But the darkness of the skyline didn’t change.

      Then she heard the scuff of footfalls, coming up the lane.

      For a moment she stood petrified; then dodged towards the nearest gutted building. The way ahead was too exposed, wide open – he would catch her. She had to hide, and wait for him to pass.

      Despite its gaping window holes, the hulk was dank and smelly. Animals had pissed in here – and maybe died, as well. She ducked into the doorway, СКАЧАТЬ