Tempus: The Phoenix Man Read online

  TEMPUS:

  The Phoenix Man

  By

  MATT HILTON

  TEMPUS:

  The Phoenix Man

  By

  MATT HILTON

  Published by Sempre Vigile Press

  Copyright © 2015 Matt Hilton

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Attributions:

  Cover design © 2015 Matt Hilton

  Images used under standard license from freedigitalphotos.net

  Background freedigitalphotos.net/VictorHabbick

  Soldier freedigitalphotos.net/Maniaroom

  Contents

  Title Page

  Start

  Thanks

  About the Author

  Other Books by the Author

  “Time is the longest distance between two places.” Tennessee Williams

  “Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?” Jack London

  His

  eyes were open.

  He wished for oblivion.

  It wouldn’t come.

  How could it when the pain would give him no release? It flashed through his being as incessantly as the lightning stabbing down from the bruised heavens.

  His head hurt. At least three concussive blows had struck him, the final one dislodging something within his skull. Blood leaked over his cheek from a deep gash in his scalp, invading his mouth, filling his senses with its bitter, salty taste. But was that the taste of his blood or the deep sense of betrayal? He could not know: he couldn’t make sense of the words fluttering through his mind like the wings of eagerly descending vultures as it tried to close down. There was pain in his body too, yet it was distant, as if his spirit were disconnected from his crippled form.

  Yet the disconnection lasted only moments.

  The caustic water began flooding through his clothing. Once again he was in touch with his body and with it the burning of his skin.

  He wanted to scream but no sound came forth.

  He couldn’t will enough strength to even vocalize his rage.

  He lay as if dead.

  Unmoving.

  He was unresponsive to the prodding of the twin ogres crouching over him.

  Oblivion continued to resist him.

  Nothing was clear but for the agony of the flesh being eaten from his bones. And the deep and abiding sense of betrayal.

  He knew his killers; knew who had sent them.

  But the knowledge was fleeting…fading.

  He could make out nothing of the faceless, hulking beasts standing over him but shadows that blurred, then blended with the ashen sky overhead.

  Satisfied that their job was done the two shambling creatures turned away, and all he could sense of their leaving was the collective rasp of their laboured breathing. Rain pattered, and then even their exhalations were lost.

  They forgot about him as he forgot about them.

  Just as he forgot about himself…

  Chapter 1

  Clapham, London – Old City

  July 12th 2002

  The central heating was off. Nothing new there, the central heating had been off for years. The A/C didn’t work either. Nothing worked. Nothing that required mains electricity. Batteries could run some things, but Warren Frome didn’t possess any batteries. His house was lit the old way, candle and paraffin lamp, but both those commodities were due to run out soon.

  His bare feet slapped across boards, but he knew where to walk to avoid splinters. His trail had become imbued in his muscle memory. Carpets, rugs, oil cloth: all gone. They’d been fuel for the fire in his hearth after the furniture ran out. Soon he’d make a start on the floorboards. Upstairs would be a good place to begin ripping up the floor. He had no use for the rooms up there now that the roof had been torn away by the last windstorm. Pretty soon the ground floor he walked through would also become redundant and he could start on the walls. No, the basement suited him fine. It was all he needed, now that he was a widower with no family to fill the other rooms.

  Thinking of his deceased family didn’t make him maudlin or wistful. He had no regard for them when they were alive, so why would he care about them now?

  ‘Bunch of free-loading parasites,’ he grumbled.

  A bucket waited for him in the closet at the end of the hall. The family bathroom had gone the way of the roof, but it wasn’t missed. When the power went off, so too did the mechanism for the waste system. Frome had filled the porcelain pot, closed the lid when the stench got too bad, and said thanks to the fickle gods when they removed his problem with one-hundred-and-forty-miles per hour winds.

  Frome, a big man, square about the shoulders and head, practically filled the doorframe as he shifted his boxers and aimed at the bucket. It was dark in the closet, but he could tell his urine was darker. Pissing blood again.

  He muttered, shook, and readjusted his shorts.

  He began the slow walk back through the hall, avoiding splinters, ash as fine as talcum adhering to his soles. The goddamn ash got everywhere, and despite his efforts to shore the entrance to the basement with plastic sheets he knew he’d been breathing the insidious stuff for weeks. Lately he’d pushed the sheets aside: his makeshift airlock was no good to him now, and only got in his way. His hair was patchwork at best, more bald than not, and weeping sores blistered his body. The postulating sores were only one reason he disdained clothing – he couldn’t bare the constant itch of material against his wounds – but there was another.

  He hiked his shorts as he walked.

  At the opposite end of the hall were the doors to the dining room and adjoining kitchen. A sharp left turn offered access to the sitting room and den. He didn’t use any of those rooms these days: all his existence spent in the hall closet, down in the cellar or scouring the rubble of collapsed buildings nearby for what he could burn, eat or screw. Sometimes he found something that could fulfill all three necessities.

  He shoved aside folds of grimy plastic, and pushed open the door to the cellar. Cellar was too grand a description for the small room at the bottom of rickety steps. It was more a dirt room, a basement at best, where once he kept his tools when he was an honest, hardworking family man.

  Now the cellar held very little. An old pot-bellied stove dominated one corner, and it was into it that he’d fed the scavenged fuel over the long months of darkness. He’d jerry rigged a flume and it took most of the smoke and fumes out of his living space, through the floor above and out the side of the half-demolished house. Along one wall was a set of metal shelves he’d stolen from a collapsed hardware store. The shelves were practically bare of tinned goods and bottled water now, and daily his supplies dwindled further. He wondered what would last longer: his life or his supplies. He decided that his favourite item of sustenance at least, would not out live him. In the opposite corner was a mattress he’d dragged down from his old bedroom, and a pile of soiled and stinking bedding. Sitting on the pallet was a woman, as equally dirty as the blankets rucked beneath her.

  She was called Laura Charles, he’d learned. Not that he gave a fuck what she was called, other than it was handy to
know when ordering her to perform the despicable acts he forced from her. She was in her late forties, skinny as a crack addict, teeth the colour of caramel, her once-dyed hair now a patchwork quilt of grey, tan and black. She was wearing an underdress that - though stained and grimy now – was diaphanous enough to reveal the nubs of her breasts and the smudge of sparse hair at her groin: the only things about her that Frome was interested in looking at. Through the sheer fabric he could also make out the bruises of frequent beatings, and the same type of weeping sores he carried. He had no desire to see either.

  ‘Your turn at the bucket, Laura,’ Frome said.

  Laura shook her head. ‘I don’t need to go.’

  ‘Well I ain’t taking you up there when you goddamn please.’ Frome glared down at her, his hands flexing. ‘You go now or not at all.’

  In the days that he’d imprisoned her, Laura had learned what it meant to argue with Frome. She nodded in acquiescence, holding out her bound wrists to him. He grabbed the rope between her hands and yanked her up. Then he made her stand while he took another rope he’d previously fashioned into a noose and draped it over her head. She worked her head side to side to allow the rope to fit snuggly under her chin. If she didn’t do it, Frome wouldn’t be as careful when he yanked the rope tight. He’d shown her that the rope controlled her fully whether round her throat or between her teeth. Her lips were still swollen from that lesson.

  Frome led her up the stairs, through the loosely hanging plastic sheets and into the hallway. Beside him she was tiny, outweighed three to one at least, and there was no need for the way he dragged her along the corridor towards the bucket.

  ‘When you’re done you can carry the damn thing outside and empty it. Don’t want your rank piss stinking the closet out.’

  Laura didn’t answer. His orders weren’t to be questioned.

  ‘Now get in there.’

  Frome stood over her as she tried to coax a trickle of urine.

  Losing patience quickly, he reached down and dragged her off the bucket.

  ‘Grab the goddamn handle, and get moving.’

  Laura did as she was told. She contemplated throwing the bucket’s filthy contents at her captor. It would be satisfying to see the muddy urine dripping from his loathsome face, but to do that was to court a more violent death than he’d already promised. She carried the bucket, tilting her body to the opposite side to offset the weight slushing back and forward. Frome led her back along the hall and through a door that opened into the kitchen. The far wall was a mound of rubble through which grey beams of light filtered. Motes of dust and ash were gathered in the air. Instinctively Laura held her breath. It was a pointless exercise because she was already poisoned by the noxious carcinogenic particles.

  ‘You know the routine by now,’ Frome said, as he reeled out more of the rope. ‘If I feel this rope go slack I’ll hunt you down and make you sorry. Got it?’

  Laura nodded meekly.

  ‘Good. Now get your skinny arse in gear. I don’t want to be out here longer than I have to.’

  Out beyond the walls of the half-demolished house the dust clouds were thick, making visibility nigh-on impossible beyond a few yards. Frome made sure that the effluence and scraps left over from his meals were dumped far enough away that the stink didn’t invade the house when the wind blew his way. For that purpose he made Laura – and previous captives – carry the bucket beyond the next mound of rubble over. Laura had been instructed to carry the bucket with one hand, while holding the rope with her other, tugging on it as she progressed so that Frome knew his captive hadn’t escaped. If he felt any slackness, or suspected that his captive was trying to loosen the noose from around their neck, then he would yank it savagely, dragging her back to him.

  Laura stepped over the low mound of bricks where the kitchen wall had collapsed. The bucket knocked against her thigh adding a fresh bruise. The contents sloshed.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing, bitch,’ Frome said. To punctuate his point he snapped his wrists hard, barking the skin around Laura’s throat as the noose tightened. ‘You spill it, I’ll make you lick up every last drop.’

  Laura could no longer hold her breath. She dug her chin against her breastbone, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. She moved away, tugging on the rope as instructed. A path had been beaten from Frome’s house to the garbage pile. She followed it, the dust clouds swirling around her. She thought shadows moved within the dust, but that could have been her imagination. When she was fifty feet out, Frome would reach the marker he’d tied to the rope. That was the boundary and Laura wasn’t allowed to progress further. She double-tugged the rope to let him know she’d arrived at the garbage pile.

  ‘OK. Do it and then get back here.’ Frome’s harsh voice was almost masked by the density of the atmosphere.

  Laura upended the bucket.

  She didn’t look at the pile of garbage. She’d seen it already and had no desire to look at human remains again. They reminded her too much of her impending fate. She tugged on the rope and Frome began reeling her in.

  Laura thought about shucking off the noose and running for it. Perhaps dying out there of starvation and thirst would be a kindness. All she had to look forward to with Frome was further rape, beatings and – when he grew tired of her – stripped down to her component parts and cooked on top of the stove he incessantly fed. Yet she feared to run, because that courted immediate violence. While she still lived there was hope that she could steal away without fearing instant pursuit. Desolated, she shuffled back towards the hole in the kitchen wall.

  The rope went slack.

  Laura feared the sudden laxness in her bindings. Frome would believe that she was responsible and come for her. She took a step back, hoping to tighten the slack.

  A gloved hand wrapped around her mouth to halt her scream. Another arm wrapped about her waist and lifted her clear of the ground. Frome was a beast she feared, but her new captor terrified her more. She tried to squirm free, twisting to see who held her. Another hand came out of the dust clouds and grabbed her by her hair, forcing her head around, while something jabbed at her neck. She felt the sting of a needle, and immediate fog swirled through her mind. Laura slumped in her captor’s grip, unaware that the noose had been lifted from her throat. She didn’t hear the bucket fall.

  ‘What the hell’s going on out there?’ Frome’s bark was lost on Laura.

  At the hole in the wall, Frome yanked hard on the rope. It had been held taut for a few seconds, as if the woman resisted his efforts to drag her back. Well, he’d show the bitch what it meant to be defiant. He wrapped the rope around his forearm, as he reeled it in hand over hand. He could feel her tugging on the other end, and through the swirling dust make out her figure as a smudge in the greyness. The bitch was being stubborn judging by the way she was dragging her heels. With more vigour he continued winding her in, conjuring new methods of how he’d beat the living shit out of her.

  Frome grinned savagely as he yanked her the last few yards. He planted his feet, readying to pull her bodily over the mound of fallen bricks.

  The rope was tugged solidly from the other end and his captive came to a halt. Before Frome could conjure up a curse, the rope was jerked again and it was Frome who was lifted off his feet and sprawled over the brick pile. His elbows battered against stone shards, tearing his skin. His chin slammed brick, and blood flooded his mouth. His torment didn’t end there. He was dragged bodily over the jagged stones, the rope around his arm now serving as a leash to guide him. He cursed and struggled to free himself. The rope fell slack and Frome found himself lying on his back, peering up through watery eyes as figures appeared from the dust all around him. There were four figures, all garbed in ash-streaked jumpsuits, ballistic vests, and full-face gas masks. One of them, a man bigger and stockier even than Frome still held the other end of the rope. Without exception the other three held assault rifles.

  Frome had heard that there was still some semblance of governmen
t out there, and that they were attempting to police a country from falling into total anarchy. He had heard the stories from some of those he’d captured, but didn’t believe. Now he had to accept the truth. He just couldn’t accept that they’d bother hunting down the likes of him. Fuck, there were worse people out there than him to worry about.

  One of the figures leaned close, placing the muzzle of his assault rifle close to Frome’s face.

  ‘Please. Don’t shoot me,’ Frome yelped.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the figure. ‘I wouldn’t waste a bullet on a piece of shit like you.’

  Thank God, Frome thought.

  But his relief was short lived.

  The cop lifted his heel, then swiftly drove it down into Frome’s throat. Frome felt the cartilage snap and pop, his larynx collapse, and immediately his throat began to fill with frothing blood. His eyes rolled, he gagged, began to choke. He stretched out his hands, begging for help, but four pitiless visors met his plea as the cops stood over to watch him die.

  Chapter 2

  Oxford Street, London – Old City

  July 12th 2002

  ‘What should I do with the woman, Chief?’

  Benny “Ox” Oxford was still carrying the unconscious woman over his shoulder, having lifted her from their van upstairs. She didn’t weigh much more than a ten-year-old child, but even if she’d been full-bodied she’d barely have registered as a tick of strain in Ox’s face. He was a mountain of a man, good for moving large objects if nothing else.

  ‘See if a medic will look her over. She’ll probably require an antidote to the anesthetic Jamal stuck her with before she’ll come round again. Once she’s been fed and watered, she can be moved out to Hemel Hempstead or one of the other work camps.’