Dancing Jax Read online

  “Bed?” Lee asked, sick of his moaning. “What bed, where?”

  “Why through yonder!” Grumbles exclaimed, nodding down the pathway he had made through the vast horde of used cards. “Behind that recent slippage, just go and see how hard Grumbles labours – as if Them Upstairs didn’t keep him fully exerted.”

  Lee felt his heart beat faster and he lurched forward, unaided. The card cliffs loomed upon either side and soon he was wading through the drifts and dunes that grew higher and higher until they were up to his waist. Then he hauled and pushed his way across the surface, slithering and sliding to the top. It was exhausting work. The chains came loose from round his arms and raked the cards behind him, and his leg was agony, but he drove himself on until he could look down the other side. Then he choked back a cry.

  Behind this musty scree, in the centre of a deep, cleared crater, was a gilded bed carved with intertwining leaves and flowers, overhung by a lilac awning of gossamer-like gauze. Under that, the figure of a beautiful girl lay upon a coverlet of fine ivory linen and, across the lacy bolster, her golden hair was arranged in lustrous whirls.

  “Charm!” he yelled.

  The boy threw himself down the slope, rolling and rattling against the carved bed base at the bottom. With cards stuck to the sticky patches of blood on his leg, he picked himself up and the silky gauze billowed before his breath.

  “Hey,” he murmured gently, as his eyes drank deep.

  She had haunted and tantalised his dreams so often, he was half afraid this ethereal vision would melt like smoke. But there she was: Charm Benedict, more lovely than he had ever seen her. The sixteen-year-old model from Lancashire was actually lying there – for real. Even so, it was almost impossible for Lee to believe his own eyes.

  There was a supernatural serenity about her. The face was pale as a winter dawn and her lips were a delicate rose. She was arrayed in a gown of creamy velvet and her arms were folded lightly across her chest. Through the tears that smudged his sight, Lee could see the subtle rising of her breast as she slept.

  “Brazil nut in the room,” he said softly. “I came to get you, babes. Dunno if you can hear what I’m sayin’, but I want you to know there ain’t nuthin’ can keep us apart, you got that? Nuthin’ and nobody. Not even this trashy bling I got hanging from these cuffs. We is connected, hun, and nuthin’ can break it.”

  Raising his hand to his ear, he pulled out the diamanté stud, then lifted the gauze and leaned inside. His fingers looked coarse and brutish compared to her porcelain elegance and the links of his chains snagged the coverlet. Drawing close, he pressed the stud into one of her hands. The flesh was cool, but not cold.

  “Kept it safe for you, Sweets,” he whispered. “Soon we’ll be together, proper and exclusive, yeah? I gotta do somethin’ first. You’d prob’ly try an’ stop me, but I’m gonna be real strong and sort it. Just trust me.”

  There was a patter of small hoofs behind and Grumbles came scampering expertly over the rustling cards, with the tray still in his hands. The Ismus floated down beside him.

  “I told you I could keep my side of the bargain,” he said.

  “Had to be sure,” Lee replied, not taking his eyes off the girl. “She likes pink though; she shoulda been dressed in pink. It all should be pink.”

  “Such a pretty lady,” Grumbles observed. “Is she of royal lineage?”

  “Only totally,” Lee replied.

  “Her subjects have good reason to be downcast then. They must be wretched and fraught with hair-pulling without her. Why, sometimes I steal in and gaze, just for the gladness of it. A most foreign sensation for me it is too.”

  “You can kiss her,” the Ismus told Lee, “but it won’t wake her like in old stories although, in the original Grimm version, the prince was so enamoured of the sleeping princess he did a lot more than that and she only awakened after giving birth to twins.”

  He gave a dirty little laugh, then added, “You could try, but even that wouldn’t wake up this one. You need to fulfil your end of the contract first. That is why she is in this tower. She is not yet wholly in the Dawn Prince’s Realm. That can only happen once the Bad Shepherd is dead.”

  Lee closed his eyes. He desperately wanted to hurt that repulsive man. He made everything sound sordid and vile. But he swallowed his temper and bit his tongue. His wounds were aching and he felt faint.

  “I know what I gotta do,” he said presently. “I do that one thing and she’ll wake up, yeah?”

  “That is the deal, yes. Once you have upheld your side, her eyelids will open.”

  “No tricks? She’ll be my Charm? Not just something that looks like her? Not like them dead dolls of the psycho tailor? And she’ll know me, yeah?”

  “No tricks. She will be the same girl you knew back in the camp, with all her memories in place.”

  Lee held up a hand. “Not that last day,” he objected. “I don’t want her to know any of that – she don’t need to know what they did to her.”

  “As you wish, so shall it be.”

  “And what about me? The coma version back home in that hospital room? I can only live here while I’m OK there. You gotta be sure to take care of that.”

  The Ismus gave his crooked smile. “Your unconscious self has already been airlifted out of North Korea,” he informed him. “You will be kept in a secure intensive-care unit for as long as necessary. No harm will come to you there, you have my word.”

  “You know what’s goin’ down back there then, huh?”

  “I straddle both worlds.”

  “So tell me.”

  The Ismus stared at him intently. “Your friends are all dead, I’m afraid,” he said, barely concealing the relish in his voice. “They attempted some foolish escape and the North Koreans executed them without mercy. There are no survivors, not a one.”

  Lee could feel himself slipping into darkness. He tried to fight against it.

  “Couldn’t end no other way,” he said with difficulty. “Told them they was dead meat walkin’.”

  “It might comfort you to know,” the Ismus continued, “that Dancing Jax has now taken over the military base and is spreading into the rest of that country.”

  “So you finally got the whole world.”

  “And just in time for Christmas – I must have been an extra good boy this year.”

  “Must be a first for you.”

  “And what a Christmas it shall be… over there.”

  Lee turned his attention back to Charm and stroked her soft cheek with the back of his hand. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to climb on to the bed next to her, hold her in his arms and fall into a deep sleep too. But that couldn’t happen. He had a task to perform. This talk of Christmas was to remind him of that – as if he needed to be.

  “I had to come here,” he said. “See what I was doing this for. Make sure it was real, so it’d be worth it, worth getting damned.”

  “You shall live as a king here,” the Ismus promised. “And she will be your queen. If you wish, there will be children. Hardly damnation.”

  Lee planted a gentle kiss on Charm’s brow.

  “I gotta go now, babes,” he told her. “But we’ll be together real soon.”

  He withdrew from beneath the awning. There would be all the time in this world for kisses later, after he’d confronted the Bad Shepherd. Taking one last look at her through the misty gauze, he turned a determined face to the Ismus.

  “Where is he then?” he asked. “Where is this shepherd guy and how many pieces do you want him in?”

  The Holy Enchanter clapped his hands with delight. “I applaud your enthusiasm,” he said. “And you have no qualms, knowing who it really is?”

  “What’s important to me is all I care about. You want me to waste Jesus Christ and wipe him out, making like he never existed back in the other place, just as I did to your Jangler? I says amen to that! Now tell me where he’s at and gimme the biggest goddamn knife you got.”

  A grimace conto
rted his face and he felt giddy.

  “First you must get that leg seen to by the Physician,” the Ismus told him. “You’re of no use to me in that state.”

  “The leg is fine. I can manage, just…”

  Lee staggered. The faint he had been holding off would be refused no longer. Darkness came roaring in. He collapsed into the cards and they flew up around him like great rectangular butterflies.

  “Sweet oblivion,” Grumbles observed enviously. “Best escape from the travails that hound us. Would that I could swoon my cares away when the fancy took me. What luxury that is.”

  The Ismus stood over Lee’s still form and rolled him over with his foot.

  “A truly blessed Christmas for everyone,” he said. “It shall be the most spectacular festive season for the entire world.”

  His eyes moved from Lee to the card mountains surrounding them.

  “I shall need your help getting him upstairs,” he told Grumbles.

  Grumbles groaned. “Another burden,” he complained. “Another trespass on my charity.”

  A brutal sneer darkened the Holy Enchanter’s face and he rested his foot on the boy’s neck.

  “Back to the White Castle for you, Creeper,” he said with scorn. “But know this: I shall never forgive you for Jangler – not ever.”

  12

  “WELL, THAT’S JUST typical, isn’t it? Look at the state of you, lounging around like some bedraggled roué. It’s disgraceful and sadly pathetic at your time of life. Just what do you think you’re doing? Wake up!”

  “Leave me alone, Evelyn,” the old man groaned.

  “I shall not! See what happens when I’m absent. You slide into these slovenly ways…”

  “Shut up, my head is killing me!”

  “So it’s drink, is it? I hope that hangover stays with you till suppertime. I always knew your weakness was the bottle, but even I never suspected you’d end up dossing down in corridors. It’ll be the gutter next, mark my words. And don’t you ever tell me to shut up – it’s plain to me that you need my firm, guiding hand if this is what you get up to in my absence.”

  “Evelyn!” he shouted angrily.

  His voice echoed back to him and his head throbbed even more.

  “Alone and yet alive,” he murmured, filling the aching silence with a quote from The Mikado. “Oh sepulchre! My soul is still my body’s prisoner!”

  Gerald Benning opened his eyes and sucked the air through his teeth. He touched the side of his head and winced. There was a large lump where he had struck the floor.

  Then he remembered.

  He tried to stand, but felt so weak he had to sit down again and it was some minutes before he could manage another attempt. In that time he took in his surroundings and shook his aching head mournfully. It was bitterly cold and the base was strangely silent. The only noises were made by the wind travelling through the tunnels and banging doors. Gerald knew that could only mean the main entrance was fully open. Down the corridor, on the furthest jeep, a solitary headlight had remained intact. Hours had passed since it had been left on and the battery was almost flat. The bulb was dim, yet there was just enough light to make out the shadowy forms of corpses. The place was littered with them. So much killing, so much death. It smelled like a butcher’s shop. But what about…

  “Maggie!” he cried, lumbering to his feet and staring around wildly. “Maggie? You here? Hello? Anyone? Hello?”

  He staggered to the refectory and looked inside. It was empty. Tables and chairs had been overturned. He tried not to imagine the struggle that had taken place here, but faces of terrified children flashed across his imagination. What had happened to them? Where were they? Crossing to the stove, he touched the metal. The fire had burned out long ago; the stove wasn’t even warm.

  Gerald blundered out. It was too dark to identify the dead. Slithering over congealed blood, he made his way to the nearest jeep. Because the generators on the base were so unreliable he knew every military vehicle was equipped with a kit in case of power failure and emergencies. Groping under the seats, he found what he was looking for and switched the torch on.

  “Dear Lord,” he breathed, when the beam revealed the gruesome horrors around him. “Please don’t let Maggie and the others be here.”

  The next hour, as he shone the torch into those dead faces, was the grimmest of his life. The English children weren’t among them, but he was too sickened to be relieved. When the beam disclosed the face of Doctor Choe Soo-jin, Gerald tried to forgive her for what she had intended to do in her zealous quest for a vaccine. But he couldn’t. Instead he wondered what had happened to little Nabi and her sister. Were they somewhere here too?

  Nauseated by the smell of blood, he couldn’t go on with the search. He climbed the stone steps that led to the terrace and gulped down the fresh, freezing air. The fog had gone completely and the darkness of evening now covered the mountains. In the far distance, he could hear the horn of a truck honking playfully and automatic rifles firing at the sky. Dancing Jax had gone out into North Korea. It wouldn’t take long for this isolated nation to fall, just as the rest of the world had done. Helicopters were probably already flying in from the neighbouring countries, with book drops and readings over loudspeakers. This country was finished.

  Gerald leaned against the low wall. He had never felt his age weigh so heavily on him before. Steeling himself for any new grisly discoveries, he went back inside. First he investigated the small dorms, but they were empty. Then he went to Lee’s room.

  The lad from Peckham was not there, but his four guards were on the floor. They were dead. One of them had been shot, but the others… their injuries were horrendous – worse than those decapitated soldiers near the jeeps. Gerald couldn’t begin to guess what had inflicted these wounds, but he was more curious about the bed’s new occupant. Lee was no longer here, but the body of General Chung Kang-dae was.

  Gerald moved closer. There was a tender reverence to the careful way in which the General had been laid out. He looked like a deceased leader, lying in state. His arms were folded across his chest and, though his uniform was stained with blood, his face and hands had been washed clean. Only one person would have done this.

  “Eun-mi?” Gerald called. “Are you here? Eun-mi?”

  In the cramped space behind the large mirror, the seventeen-year-old North Korean girl uncurled from the foetal position in which she had spent the past few hours and gazed into the room beyond, where the white-haired Englishman was sweeping a torch beam over the walls. She had thought he was dead. Reaching for her gun, she rose to correct that error.

  Gerald left the medical room and turned the corner into the prohibited area. The discarded mop and bucket were still there, but had been kicked to the wall. It was time to see what lay beyond those forbidden doors.

  Spencer didn’t know how long he had been strapped to the examination table. In spite of the enormous discomfort and constant fear, he had nodded in and out of sleep. But now his stomach was telling him, with rumbles of increasing volume, he had missed two meals and his mouth was parched. He had no idea what had occurred outside those soundproof doors, but the fact that no one had been back here couldn’t be a good sign.

  “Well, you wanted a bit of privacy,” he reproached himself. “You got that right enough, you pillock.”

  He tried to persuade himself that the absolute darkness was a blessing, as it meant he couldn’t see the Marshal’s corpse lying on the next table. But not being able to see it was actually worse. If it moved, how would he know? Did that book have the power to resurrect? According to the Ismus it did; that’s what he’d promised Lee. What if it turned dead bodies into zombies? The reanimated Marshal might slip silently off his table, or just reach across for him…

  “You’re such a wuss, Herr Spenzer,” he scolded himself, using the nickname Marcus had given him back in the camp. “Things are bad enough without you inventing new horrors.”

  And then the doors opened and a light shone in.
To Spencer’s eyes it was blinding and he squinted as he wondered who had finally come into the lab and what their intent was.

  “Spencer!” Gerald exclaimed in astonishment when the torch beam fell on the anxious boy’s face. “What are… are you all right?”

  “Get me off this ruddy table!” Spencer cried, overjoyed to hear that familiar voice. “I’ve been here like forever! What’s been going on out there?”

  Unfastening the buckles, Gerald told him everything he knew. Spencer uttered a horrified groan.

  “It’s all my fault,” he confessed.

  “Rubbish. How could it be? There, that’s your feet done. You’ll probably get nasty pins and needles so don’t try and move too much straight away.”

  “It is my fault!” the boy insisted. “I turned Doctor Choe. I recited the beginning of DJ at her and the book… it sort of came alive. I didn’t expect that. I just wanted to stop her. She was going to saw the top of my head off and take my brain out. Seriously – I know it sounds ridiculous now, but that’s what she was going to do. She was round the twist, but I swear I never thought it’d lead to—”

  “You’ve nothing to feel guilty about,” Gerald assured him. “Dancing Jax was going to take over here anyway; you just speeded it up a little, that’s all.”

  “Was it really a massacre out there?”

  “Yes, and you’ll need a strong stomach to walk through it.”

  “And our lot? Where’s Maggie and Lee and the rest?”