Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [43]
Or am I just being another stupid, burnt-out, paranoid hippie?
What I do know is you can track the slow death of innocence and hope across the 1960s and into the 1970s, as a parade of lone gunmen and sly corruptors attacked from without and within, a thousand unconnected events, coincidences and haphazard mistakes leading to the eradication of the last chance we had for a better world.
The bland men in their bland suits won, and they would have won without their Colour-Beasts and whatever other super-secret weapons they used, because they're just harder than us, they'll go that one step further to achieve their ends. We never stood a chance.
I've seen Denny several times, though never face-to-face, over the thirty-plus years since we last met in Golden Gate Park on that misty night when my world finally collapsed. He was always a grainy image in the background of front page newspaper photos at global hotspots – though I could always tell it was him – or merging into the crowds on TV news reports of G2 summits and WTO meetings. Nam in the early days, Cambodia, El Salvador, Colombia, Grenada, Afghanistan twice, Serbia, Iraq; some I saw the pictorial evidence, others I simply knew that's where he was. Because Denny was good at playing the game.
Headlights just played across the dark fields and trees at the end of the lane. This is it, the end. He's here.
The other day I saw a news report of a team of weapons experts coming back from a long stay of negotiations with various regimes in the Middle East. Before that they'd been in the former Yugoslavia. And before that ... who knows? Who knows anything, really? And at the back of the group trooping off the plane was Denny, back on American soil at last. I could see this wasn't the Denny who'd saved me on that first night we met. He'd worked hard to get his cold, dead, killer's eyes; and he'd got himself a nice, bland, merge-into-the-background suit.
The next day my phone started acting strange, taps and clicks and occasionally I'd hear my own voice played back to me. Mail began arriving late and clearly opened; they didn't even bother to hide their dirty fingerprints. And this morning I found a letter in my mailbox that contained a single sheet of paper; on it was a drawing of two hearts.
The implication was clear: finally, it was my time. I'd disappear like all the other thousands all over the globe. Even though I'm a weak, cowardly thing, not a threat at all, those kind can't abide loose ends.
The lights are moving slowly up the lane. He doesn't need to move
fast. There's nowhere for me to run, and besides, I'm tired of it. Sometimes I dream of San Francisco and what might have been. I dream of the person I used to be – bright, happy, filled with hope, and with love – and I think of a life wasted.
I don't like this world. There's no place in it for someone like me. The gun is hard and alien and I'm still not quite sure how I should go about it. Do it now, get it over with? Or face-to-face, a last futile gesture? Does it really matter?
The worst thing is that nobody will care.
The sound was like a siren running backwards, or the last, dying wail of some mythical beast. It filled the house, echoing from the very rafters.
I stood on the landing, listening to the crunch of gravel as the car pulled on to the turning area at the front of the house. The gun was against my temple, my finger tight on the trigger, and still I couldn't do it. But when I saw his face, carrying the weight of years and other people's misery, that would be enough, I thought; I hoped. But that strange, disturbing sound?
'You wouldn't believe the trouble I had finding you.'
The voice made me start and I almost pulled the trigger by accident. A strange man stood at the end of the landing. He had a friendly face and he was wearing a floppy hat that would have been fashionable back in the 1970s and a long scarf wrapped several times around his neck.