Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [77]
He went back and searched the entire rack. Looking behind every magazine and inside, too, opening them up to check whether the comic had somehow got folded inside. It took him an hour. By the time he was finished the girl at the checkout was clearing her throat and giving him dirty looks. Vincent knew the comic was gone. Two minutes before the store shut Vincent gave up. He walked out. His route out of the store took him past the comic rack. He glanced automatically at the rack and there it was. The red and silver cover. Someone had found it among the magazines and had put it back where it belonged. Vincent just stood staring, unable to move. The girl at the checkout said something sarcastic and looked pointedly at her watch. Vincent jerked out of his paralysis. He paid, taking the money out of his wallet with trembling hands, and put the comic carefully into a plastic bag which he put inside his shirt. He pushed through the door of the drugstore and stepped outside.
‘Hi, Vincent.’
Standing beside Vincent’s bicycle was Calvin Palmer. If Vincent’s mind hadn’t been on the comic book he might have realized that there was something strange about the other boy’s voice. Calvin’s face was pale in the drugstore neon. But Vincent was excited and he was pleased to see Calvin.
‘Hey, wait until you see what I’ve found.’
‘Sure. Just come around here a second.’ Before Vincent could reply the other boy was gone. He followed him around the corner of McCray’s to the section of mall parking lot that was reserved for delivery trucks and employees’ vehicles. It was a quiet enclosed square surrounded by the rear walls of stores on three sides. As Vincent walked into it he was only a hundred metres from the main road, maybe twenty metres from his bicycle.
Too far.
Calvin was standing there, waiting for him. There were four other people there, three men and a woman. Vincent didn’t recognize the woman or two of the men. The third man he knew immediately. Vincent had reached inside his shirt and drawn out the comic. He was holding it, ready to show to Calvin. Now it dropped from his fingers, cover fluttering open. It lay on the ground, a meaningless flat square of colours. Oil from the asphalt bled into the corner of the cover. Vincent made no move to pick it up.
The third man smiled. ‘You’ve recognized me, haven’t you?’ he said. He was coming closer. ‘I guess you’ve seen the posters,’ said Bobby Prescott.
The other men and the woman moved around behind Vincent, blocking the only way out. ‘In case you don’t know why I’m up on those posters, it’s because of the things I do with kids,’ said Bobby Prescott.
No one was paying any attention to Calvin and he began to edge away towards the pile of cardboard boxes and garbage cans behind McCray’s. Vincent saw Calvin’s bicycle parked there. An expensive Ryohin Keikaku shaft‐drive model. Calvin was moving towards it.
‘I don’t do those things with all kids. Just the ones like the Gameboys or the Crows. You know. The ones who play on computers all night.’ Bobby Prescott pointed at Vincent. ‘Like you.’
Calvin was climbing on the Keikaku now.
‘And the ones who ride around on bicycles all day.’
Someone ran past Vincent from behind. The woman. She was on Calvin, pulling him off the bike and throwing him to the ground at Bobby Prescott’s feet. ‘Like your friend,’ said Bobby Prescott. He knelt down beside Calvin. ‘We promised your friend that we’d let him go if he found someone else for us. And he found you. But I don’t think we will let him go.’
Calvin was crawling away from Bobby Prescott, dragging himself towards Vincent. His head was hanging down and Vincent thought he was crying. But now he looked up and Vincent saw his face and he looked too scared to cry.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Calvin, crawling towards him.
‘It’s okay,’ said Vincent.
‘Before we get started, I’d just like to introduce my friends,’ said Bobby Prescott. ‘This is Sally and Eliot and Lyndon.’ But Vincent wasn’t listening to him. Memories were stirring in his mind, like things moving through deep water. Things he’d been unable to face.