Decay Inevitable

He took the stairs at a canter, trying to listen above the clatter of his heart and the static hiss of rain for her noise as she pursued him. Pain flooded his body and he greyed out, only regaining his senses when he clouted his head against a drain pipe. He could smell the wetness of his flesh where the shell had torn him open.

Here she came. Here she came. He could hear her moving through the rain. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see her dodging the drops, mindful of how the water in her clothes might slow her down. The way she moved... in his delirium, Marshall almost laughed with the grace of it. He managed to lever himself up to look over the edge of the balcony, and as soon as he did so about a square foot of masonry disappeared, inches away from his face. She was shooting on the lam and she’d be here in about thirty seconds to mop up. He knew he was dead. It was just a matter of timing.

“Sean!” he called out, but his voice was relinquishing him, or he was relinquishing his voice. It was strange. He had never before felt so pumped up and yet so tired at the same time. The adrenaline flying through his system had no doubt been put there by the bullet that took his hand off, but the loss of blood was getting to him already. A veil was falling across his vision. There was not long left.

Marshall let himself into the flat with the key Sean had had cut for him. He moved through the corridor, listening to the rain fly off him and spatter the thin carpet. It was dark in there. Reaching out to flick on the light hardly helped, but he knew what all that was about. Hold out, just for a bit. God, the water. It was coming off him like he had a tap switched to flood mode. It was only when he reached the end of the corridor, where the unnaturally white glare from the strip-lighting in the kitchen fizzed its acid tones across the linoleum, that he realised that it was his gored arm that was causing the noise, emptying him of blood in little spurts and spits.

“Sean?” His voice was a croak, nothing more. Behind him, in the thrashing rain, he thought he heard footsteps on the stairwell, but they didn’t seem fast enough to be hers. He doubted he would hear her anyway. “Emma?”

Up ahead, the bedroom door was ajar. He could see shadows moving across the wall. He made his way, perilously slowly, towards the chink of light, wondering at the motes of colour that were spinning around the threshold. A moan. He heard a moan from the bedroom. God, please, had she beaten him to it? Was she here already? Was she killing them already?

Marshall staggered on the carpet and reached out his hand to break his fall. He collapsed against the door, feeling the specks of whizzing colour sting his flesh as though they were travelling right through him. In the bedroom, he saw through eyes that were filling with blood that Emma was naked, straddling Sean who lay on the bed. They couldn’t see him. They couldn’t hear him. Fading, he pulled his gun and summoned as much strength as he could to fire a bullet into the ceiling.

Emma whipped her head round at the retort. Marshall couldn’t be sure if the shock she registered was at the sight of him or the spectacle that filled the doorway behind him. He wished he could have stuck around in order to find out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: WORST CHASE SCENARIO

DEATHCHASER.

Will thought of the word and felt the bitter taste flood the back of his throat again. He had first heard it whispered in a café that morning as he breakfasted on poached eggs and toast. It had clearly been used to describe him; nobody else was eating at the neighbouring tables.

“You say something?” he asked the men hunched over the counter, drinking from chipped mugs of coffee. Heads shook.

Will had returned to his meal, mildly satisfied by the way he had silenced them. There had been a degree of fear in the way they regarded him, he felt. That could only be a good thing.

But, deathchaser.

They couldn’t know of his mission, could they? It was something he had decided to embark upon alone. So that meant – what?

Will twisted the rear-view mirror around so that he could see his face. Did he look that bad? Really that bad? The dusky arcs beneath his eyes, the pauperish complexion, the mottled aspect of the skin stretched across his hands – did these things make him appear as though he were on some irrevocable decline? Couldn’t it be seen as a good thing, his losing some weight?