The Farm, elapsed time : unknown.
"Come on, wake up," said a voice, echoing and distant as if from a great height.
"Not again," Libra said, trying to get up and failing. His body was not fully obeying him.
"What the fuck ...?" he slurred, as hands lifted him to a sitting position. His head lolled like one of those nodding dogs in the back of cars.
"They took some cell samples," said a voice. "Bastards pumped gas into your room, wheeled you out to the infirmary. You're going to hurt like hell when you recover."
Libra tried to shake his head. His State of Grace activated, but there was nothing it could do against the effects of a perfectly normal drug.
"I've tried the healing touch before," Anna Dawson said, in a whisper in his ear. "On others who got the gas like you. It doesn't work except if there's been cell damage. Doesn't cure poisons or diseases."
"Great," Libra moaned, suddenly trying not to gag. His jaw dropped. He felt like puking ...
"Don't," cautioned someone, as if from a height. "If your airways get clogged with vomit in your state ..."
A hand cupped his rough chin, lifted his head. Libra found himself staring into the eyes of the one he knew as Anastace Deveraux.
Anastace was an elderly woman, her greying hair formerly brunette. Her lined face was usually set in an expression of disdain for the world: her hair, tied behind her in a tight bun, reinforced the mean elderly schoolmistress image.
"Hello, Mother Superior," Libra said. "Is it time for Confessions again?"
"It's the drugs," someone else said. Anna Dawson.
"I know what he's saying," harrumphed the woman, dropping Libra's head gently. It rolled to one side. Libra did not feel inclined to move it either way.
A beautiful woman entered Libra's slanted point of view. Sensuous lips brushed his: a mop of curly red hair fell about his eyes, brushed his cheeks.
There was a feeling of incredible pleasure, and warmth, and a sense of being flooded with bright, warming light. Libra felt the light wash away the effects of the gas he'd been under. He began to regain his senses with astonishing speed as the redhead's uncanny healing gift burned away the chemical taints and residues in his bloodstream.
And then all he felt was warmth, and light, and those lips, and her warm breath on his face ...
Lips which suddenly pulled sharply away, leaving his face cold and exposed. Libra felt cold and exposed all over. He looked down, saw that he was in his underwear, and that there was a large square dressing on his abdomen.
He felt clear headed, alert and refreshed, as if he'd just taken a long shower.
The sound of women giggling made him look down.
The kiss had left him with a raging hard on.
He glanced up, saw that he was in the presence of three women, and made a small whining sound in the back of his throat as the red glow started at his cheeks and worked its way rapidly down past his neck ...
The redhead was Mary Chesters, the most powerful healer in the compound. In fact, the only known healer in the compound - at least, in terms of possessing a known gift of bodily healing.
Libra found himself being wheeled by Michaels along the corridor from Red Sector towards the elevator chaft in the centre of the compound, with Mary Chesters, Anastace Dexeraux and Anna in tow.
"What's happening now?" Libra asked Michaels. "Are you going to put me back into isolation again?"
Michaels shrugged. "Orders are to take you to the lift. The Colonel will see to you from there," he said, his deep voice a rumble.
At the central elevator shaft, Libra saw Smudge waiting for him. Michaels wheeled Libra over to meet Libra's old friend, snapped off a crisp salute and marched out.
Smudge looked at the three women standing over Libra in the wheelchair. "What are you waiting for?" he said. "Piss off back to your sectors."
"The thanks we get," muttered Anastace. "Come on, Mary. Let's get back to our flock, and away from these ... heathens." She sniffed at Smudge and Anna, and flounced off in the opposite direction to Michaels, Mary in tow.
Smudge looked at Anna, who shrugged and turned to go back to Red Sector.
That left Smudge and Libra alone in the antechamber, beside the elevator doors.
"You can get up, now," Smudge said. "They say that Mary's gift can cleanse anything except amputations and AIDS; and trust me, we haven't sunk so low as to infect any of you with that, yet." He gestured. "Come with me."
Libra got up from the wheelchair, brushing down his jumpsuit. "Where to now?" he asked.
Smudge grinned, a grin Libra hadn't seen since 1991. "Trust me, Peck," he said: and suddenly, it was just like old days.
"So you made Colonel, eventually," Libra said. "I should be saluting you."
"Nah," Smudge said. "In the same time, you'd have made it to General."
The elevator shaft hummed quietly. There were no indicators to show what level they were on: how far they had to go. In fact, the acceleration had been so smooth, Libra had no idea whether they were going up or down.
"What part of the compound are you taking me to now?" Libra asked. "More holding pens for supernatural creatures? A fucking gladiatorial arena?" He frowned. "The morgue?"
"Nothing of the sort, my old friend," said Smudge. The door slid open. "Nothing of the sort."
A wall of something assaulted Libra, forcing its way into his nose, almost causing his airways to slam shut. He coughed, wiped tears from his eyes, looked up ... and marvelled.
The stuff he was trying to breathe was ... fresh air.
He was on the surface, in what looked like a storeroom.
The surface stank of cows and turpentine.
"Where ... where is this place?" Libra asked, as Smudge stepped out of the elevator car. The room Libra stepped into looked like an authentic storeroom for keeping mops, brushes and cleaning chemicals. A shed, by the looks of it.
Rusting paint tins were stacked on the opposite shelf amid dusty half - filled bottles of paint thinner and layers of thick cobwebs. The walls were corrugated iron, and the whole thing shook as a gust of wind rattled the door and filled the air inside the chamber with cold, fresh air. Libra, prepared for the smell, breathed it in gratefully, ignoring the cow stench and the turps aroma, both of which conspired to assault his sinuses and fill his eyes with tears again.
Or perhaps he was lachrymating for a different reason ...
"You're not letting me go, are you?" Libra asked.
Smudge shook his head. "Only one way out, and that's through the morgue," he replied.
"Then why are you bringing me up here?" Libra asked.
"So's we can talk," Smudge said. "That ... and to get you the fuck away from Inmate Five."
"Who's ... Inmate Five?" Libra asked.
"You ... don't want to know," Smudge replied.
"Tell me," Libra said.
Peck looked at Libra, saw resolution in his eyes. "All right, I will," Smudge said. "But I didn't bring you up here to talk about Inmate Five."
"Then what did you come up here with me for?" Libra asked.
"Let's get outside," Smudge said.
"This," Libra said, sitting on a low grassy rise overlooking a flooded valley below, "is the strangest form of imprisonment I have ever heard of."
The Farm, as Smudge called it, was all around them. The fields were bordered by hedgerows of holly and hazel; cows sat in the fields, grazing and defecating great lumps of fertiliser like ambulating manure processors.
Underground, it was the Big Brother House. On the outside ... it was The Farm. And its cows had never felt the pinch of Foot and Mouth Disease. And the milk they produced was delicious.
Clouds wheeled overhead in a dreadfully overcast sky. Libra looked up, then at Smudge who sat beside him.
"There's no sun," Libra said.
"Nope," Smudge replied. "It's been promising a spot of rain later."
Libra looked across the valley. There were houses built high up on the opposite side of the lake which filled the valley. He pointed them out to Smudge.
"I wouldn't like to swim that lake," Smudge said. "They say it's bottomless."
"Really?" Libra said.
"No, not really. But there is a village lying at the bottom of it," Smudge replied. "We flooded it four years or so ago, so Birmingham could get a fresh water supply. We've been flooding valleys round here for decades. Everybody thinks we stopped the practice in the Seventies, but ..." He gestured. "It still goes on."
"Does Tony Blair get protests about this from the Welsh Assembly?" Libra asked. "Or do they cover up that news, as well?"
Smudge stared at Libra. "How the fuck did you know we're in Wales?"
Libra smiled slightly. "Let's just say ... a little spirit whispered in my ear."
Smudge shook his head, rested it against a fencepost. "Beats me, Peck. I mean, what the fuck's all this about, eh?"
"What's what all about?" Libra asked.
"What's all this 'chosen' lark about? Why were you suddenly coming on like some grand fucking Messiah, leading people in some crusade against the ... the ..."
"The supernatural?"
"Don't give me that!" Smudge said. "They're extraterrestrial, maybe they're extradimensional, but don't tell me you believe that ... that people out there can rise up from the grave and run around drinking blood like, you know, vampires and shit?"
"Are you sure?" Libra said: then regretted his statement, as Smudge's face turned to anger in a flash.
"Yes, I am fucking sure!" bellowed Smudge, his face growing red. "Even that one! There's no such fucking thing as vampires!"
"Yet we left her tied up in the desert, after you lot ..." Libra nodded, "and when we got back at dawn, there was nothing to say she'd even been there."
"There's no such thing as fucking vampires!" Smudge reiterated. "She just got lucky, that's all. She managed to slip her bonds and ran off into the desert. She got away, that's all."
"That's what I used to think. But who can tell, if the desert sands hadn't been mixed with her ashes after the sun had cremated her to a powder?"
"Don't. Talk. Bollocks," Smudge said, clearly biting off each word.
Libra shrugged. "I'm just saying, that's all ..." he said. "The things I've seen since ..."
"Since what?" Smudge said.
"You wouldn't understand," Libra said. "You really wouldn't."
"I might," Smudge said. "After I was ... recruited ... I found myself on some pretty hairy fucking missions, let me tell you. The things we found ourselves tracking ..."
"You never got back to Mandy and Chrissie, did you?" Libra asked, hastily changing the subject.
Smudge shook his head, sadly. "Ta for reminding me of why I brought you up here. It's Mandy and Chrissis I want to talk about. How are they now?"
"Last I saw of them, they were moving away," Libra said. "They left town, hoping to find a better life away from Liverpool. Too many bitter memories. Me, too, constantly reminding them of you."
"Shit," Smudge said. "I know I wanted to get in touch, but ..." He sighed. "How could I?"
"Yeah," Libra said. "You couldn't even tell me, could you?"
Smudge shook his head. "Part of the deal. I had to throw everything away, especially those who knew me. From that time on, I could no longer walk down the streets of any town I'd ever walked in. When all the CCTV cameras began coming up on street corners, I found the list of towns I could walk in started to get very, very small.
"Funny thing about being part of the crowd who are working to make a Big Brother society; if you don't want to become a victim of it, you have to distance yourself from the very Utopia you're trying to create."
"Mandy and Chrissie are doing all right," Libra said. "I saw to that."
"I know," Smudge said, "with some of the interest from your share. I keep tabs on them from time to time. She's still doing part - time work to support Chrissie through school. Chrissie's fourteen, now. She was three when she kissed her Daddy goodbye as he went off to the big bad war in Kuwait." He looked at Libra. "If there's one thing I really regret, it's having to cut myself off from those two."
"Oh yeah," Libra said.
Smudge paused a while. "You know, Peck, I'm legally dead, you know that?"
Libra nodded, solemnly.
"What I didn't tell you is that the recruiters ... came looking for the both of us," Smudge said. "Before ... I received two gentlemen in my tent. Very polite, they were: very soft spoken, and calm. They knew what we'd done, and in exchange for our cooperation, they were even going to allow us to keep our shares.
"But in exchange ... we were going to have to be made legally dead."
Libra shook his head. "So why did they leave me out of it?"
"They changed their minds," Smudge said. "Maybe they wanted someone who sounded convincing. A survivor. Someone unimpeachable, someone they couldn't corrupt or suborn, who could tell a story of friendly fire and everyone would believe him, because ... because you were as straight as a die."
Libra stared at Smudge.
"So," Libra said, "they chose you, and staged that whole thing for me." He looked out across the waters. "The ... building. The loot. The ... thing we did. It was all part of a scam."
"No, the ... thing was real," Smudge said. "This was two nights before the event. We'd planned every stage, right down the line. Go in under cover of darkness, take out the guards, disable any alarm systems, the lot. Loot what we could, torch the place. Make it look like a robbery."
"And they let you ... us ... go through with it," Libra said.
"They wanted to see if we could do it," Smudge said. "If we were good enough for them." He shook his head. "And we were, weren't we? We fucking were ..."
"How were we to know she was active at night?" Libra asked. "How old did she look? Sixteen? Christ, how long had she been looking like a sixteen - year - old?"
"Don't give me that," Smudge said. "She wasn't a fucking vampire -"
"The way she moved," Libra said.
"No way -"
"Like a snake on silk -" Libra said.
There was movement, the sound of rapid booted footsteps. Libra and Smudge looked up, saw Michaels approaching them, in fatigues, running. Smudge turned, looked up, stood as Michaels approached. Smudge motioned for Libra to stand as well. Once again, as Michaels arrived, he stood to attention and snapped off another neat salute.
"Report," Smudge said.
"Inmate Five, sir," Michaels said. "Somehow ... somehow, he's managed to escape his Isolation cell." He glanced around. "He's on the loose again, somewhere in the compound."
Smudge looked at Libra, gestured. Libra looked at Michaels, decided that now was not a good time to try to escape, and allowed himself to be led back towards the shed, and the lift back down to the compound.
Besides, his curiosity was now getting the better of him. Just who was this "Inmate Five," anyway?
As they made their way down the grassy slope, leaving the valley behind, the darkening clouds overhead began to grow even darker as a hard, cold wind rose up.
"Oh, by the way," Libra asked, "can I ask you a favour?"
Smudge shrugged. "Anything but your freedom," he replied.
"Tell me ... what day is it today?"
"Today?" Smudge said. "It's Monday, July the 22nd."
"Monday?" Libra asked. Then, incredulously: "July?"
It began to rain around them.
Heavily.
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001