Bleeker Hill by Russell Mardell

Author:Russell Mardell [Mardell, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784626228
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

4

Turtle remained several steps behind Bergan as they walked their side of the building. At the start he had tried to make conversation with him, his natural chatty impulses heightened by his unease at the surroundings and the unrelenting nervousness he had been feeling since ploughing into the frozen body of Connor, but Bergan wasn’t biting. The great giant merely wandered on, checking doors and empty rooms, feeling out the lay of the building. He never once turned back to Turtle, that horrid warped impression of Bergan’s impassive, blank face remaining blessedly out of sight, soaking up the drabness ahead and not the shit-scared chef behind.

He could hear Bergan talking to himself, mumbling into the air, not quite words but sounds, expressive utterances sighing out of his mouth, articulated in some unseen place and escaping out of him in every breath, every heartbeat. He seemed to be walking differently too; there was something off about his usual, casual stride. He had always walked like a man who knew he held total control over everyone he spoke to – because he did – but now his walk seemed to stutter and falter every other step, like a limp; his great big army boots scuffing at the floor. Still he fiddled with the pistol, spinning the chamber, pocketing the weapon and then pulling it out again several steps on as if he had forgotten he had it. For Turtle, more than the ghostly face, the faltering walk and the random, alien words, it was Frankie Bergan’s measure of seeming indecisiveness that really scared him.

They arrived at a giant pair of double doors at the end of a corridor and Bergan led them through into a huge arched room. Even in the half-light, Turtle could see how grand and imposing it was, with its wide walls and an unnecessarily high ceiling. Bergan flicked on a switch at the door and a long line of lights flickered and popped high above them like muzzle flashes at the ceiling, blasting the room with an ethereal brightness that made Turtle blink in discomfort. The room stretched a long way back and along each wall were a line of symmetrical beds with upright lockers separating each. At the far end of the room an empty doorway led to a toilet block and a line of sinks. It reminded Turtle of an army barracks and a hundred war films he had seen as a boy. Each bed was made; the duvet turned back, the pillows plumped, the ordered clinical nature of it all wildly out of step with the neglected rot that they had encountered so far. Moving closer he started to run his hands across the metal bed supports and they came away smeared with a light stickiness. A tap was dripping further on in the toilet block, the steady plop-plop of water magnified against the wide emptiness that seemed to pull out all around them. The room was a veritable palace compared to everything else they had lived and breathed for the last countless days.

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