Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [142]
I spotted a familiar corner, vaulted up a couple of steps, and found myself in one of the exhaust ducts.
They were gaining on me, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it. But at least I was going to try.
I ran past an endless wall of metal, pocked with a century’s wear; the sound of air rushed in my ears as I stumbled forward, tripping and careering down the tunnel. And always behind me, and getting closer, were men running after me with only one thing on their mind. Occasionally, a bullet whined down the dark tunnel past me. They hadn’t hit me yet, but they would.
I felt like the ghost in the machine, trying to find a way out. Trying to find the door to the outside, where there would be a sky above.
I ran, and I ran, but my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. My legs started going, the muscles melting into fire too insubstantial to carry me on. The footsteps were thundering louder, and my life had been too long and deep for me to find anything else left to give. I ran, but I began to fail, my feet losing rhythm, the shadowy, cold walls around me swirling into darkness.
My knees buckled beneath me and I stumbled, knowing that I had given it my best but that I had lost the race. My hands flailed out, desperate to find something to hold on to, something to stop me from just pitching forward forever onto my face.
And as I fell I felt a tiny hand grabbing hold of mine.
The hand was warm and tender, and the voice, when it came, was firm, whispering in my ear. A voice that had my own in it, and Henna’s, too.
“Come on, Daddy,” she said. “It’s time to leave.”
I didn’t question it, but tightened my hold on the little fingers pressed into my palm. I was dragged forward, the small, soft voice still urging me on. My legs found new strength, and the pain in my chest faded away to nothing or became so loud I couldn’t hear it anymore. My body wrenched order from chaotic failure, and began to work in time again.
I didn’t fall, but found a new rhythm. I ran down the tunnel like a child to the sea, until the walls were a blur and all I could truly sense was that tiny warmth and her voice drawing me on. As I ran I knew the footsteps were falling behind, still following but irrelevant now. All they had was hate to pull them on. There are stronger pulls.
I hurtled after Angela as if it would be my last run ever, and I felt ludicrously happy and knew that’s the way it should be. I knew finally that you shouldn’t lie down and wait for darkness, leaving quietly, slouching toward death. You should run, because the only real fear is that you’ll stop running, that you’ll stop doing, that you’ll come to an end before everything else.
As I ran I felt each second stretch to breaking point as it tried to hold everything that had gone before it. Nothing was lost, nothing was futile. Every thing I had done, every glance, every word, every breath—shone, huge and limitless and mine. My life didn’t pass in front of me—I ran in front of it. Nearly had been right. Memories are nothing more than a book you’ve read and lost, not a Bible for the rest of your life.
I saw a light ahead, and began to notice strange sounds reverberating down the long tunnel around me. I could still hear the footsteps of Yhandim and his men, but they were a long way behind me now. Sooner or later, they would catch up, but at least I would make it out of New Richmond. I trotted the last stretch of tunnel raggedly, losing rhythm again. The joy was fading, as if it had been a fuel I was now coming to the end of. The joy had been everything that Rapt should have been, and I wished it were easier to come by.
Angela’s form flickered in front of me, leading me up some staircase I’d never seen before. There was a rectangle of light at the end of the tunnel and I realized I had somehow come up another level, out of the exhaust ducts and toward the exit I knew.
The guys at the door stood there staring, mouths gaping. I was