Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [106]
I don’t eat ice cream very often anymore, but I’ve always tried to follow what the old man on the beach said. I’ve tried to mold my world and not settle for less than what I think I want. To write my own lines every now and then. The old man meant well, but what he didn’t tell me is that sometimes even the best sentiments, the most glorious acts, are not enough. He didn’t tell me that the world is simply stronger, and will bend you much more than you bend it; or that for much of the time you will help it
He didn’t tell me that you may get confused, and lose your way, and that help may never come.
I have made my life unavoidable. I did it to myself. While I was Gone Away I think I began to realize there might be something I could do to save it.
I was Gone Away for a long time, at least several hours. I’d never been away that long before, and when I eventually got back I was exhausted, terrified, and alone. The return is like waking up from your seventy-fifth hangover in a row to find that you’ve run out of coffee and American Express has put a bounty on your head. I faded back into life with the vague feeling of having been summoned, and found myself standing in a thick section of forest which was clearly a very long way from the village I’d fled.
I felt guilty at having abandoned Vinaldi, but the truth of the matter was that I could have done no good by being caught. Splitting up was the right thing to do. People don’t just do it in horror films to make the movie longer—they do it because it means not everyone gets killed at once. Running had also been the best policy, bad though I was now feeling about it. Vinaldi had been captured, but I hadn’t—which meant I was still, technically at least, in a position to do something.
When the guilt subsided I looked around in an attempt to discover where I was. Trees still marched off in all directions, but the ground was rougher than any I’d seen before in The Gap. Large rocks poked out of the leaves and there were hillocks and depressions in the ground. The light was a dim greeny-blue, filtered by the trees. The light made it look as if the forest was underwater.
I had no idea where I was, or how to get back to the village. My bleary examination of the ground failed to reveal any sign of the leaves having been disturbed from any direction in particular; it appeared that I had just been beamed down out of nowhere.
The first decision I had to make was whether to take any more Rapt. Or rather, since I was obviously going to take some more at some stage, whether I should take it there and then. I could feel a residual buzz in the back of my head and knew that the buzz would probably stay at that level for another hour or so, but there was no telling when I’d come up against something which would require me to be utterly off my face to survive. Decisions, decisions.
“Soldier.”
When I heard the voice I thought I was going to die. All my internal organs twitched at once, as if trying to leap out of a body which they clearly believed was not long for this world. I dropped to the ground in a crouch, darting glances around in as many directions as I could without actually disengaging my eyes from their sockets.
“Soldier.”
I almost didn’t hear it the second time, because my heart was beating so loudly. But then the word was repeated again. It was coming from behind me. Naturally.
Using my hands to brace myself, I slowly turned to face the other way without standing up. There was no one there. All I could see was a collection of hillocks, covered in trees, shading off into the darkness like undulating dunes on the seabed.
“Yes, soldier. Come to me.”
I saw a flicker by one of the hillocks, and had a strange urge to get up, but stayed where the fuck I was. One of the things about Rapt is that you learn to heartily distrust your first impressions. Being in The Gap at all is ill-advised.