The 13th Horseman - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,76
the tolling of a funeral bell.
“You want it?” Mr Franks coughed. “You’re going to have to kill me to get it.”
Without a word, Drake raised the scythe and angled the point towards the teacher’s head. “That’s it, boy,” Mr Franks hissed. “What are you waiting for? Do it. Kill me. Become the Death you are.”
Drake shifted his grip on the handle. He chose a spot in the centre of Mr Franks’s chest.
“Come on, what are you waiting for? Do it,” Mr Franks snarled, and Drake saw the teacher’s teeth were coated in blood. “Finish me; do it!”
Without a word, Drake brought the Deathblade down sharply. There was a sound of tearing metal and Mr Franks screamed briefly before he realised he was still very much in one piece.
The armour fell in two, like a peanut shell splitting open. From within the cables and circuitry, a blue glow began to flicker. Drake alone watched as the glow rose into the air, forming a pulsating egg shape. And then, it was gone.
Over by the side of the road, Mel made a sound between a sneeze and a scream. Then she sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. “Wow,” she muttered. “That was... interesting.”
“She’s alive!” Pest cried. “You did it!”
“That’s one problem solved,” Famine said. He gave the teacher a kick. “What are we going to do with him?”
“Yeah, what are you going to do with me?” Mr Franks demanded.
“Leave him there,” War shrugged. He studied the blade of his sword for a moment, shook his head, then slipped it into the sheath across his back.
“You can’t leave me here!” Mr Franks looked pointedly to his arms and legs, which were still trapped within the twisted wreckage of the armour. “I can’t move.”
“Good, then you can explain everything to the police,” Pest said.
“The police?” Mr Franks spluttered. “But... but that’s for humans.”
“Yes, but you are human now, aren’t you?” Pestilence said. “Your choice, no one else’s. I’d imagine the police will want to ask you a lot of questions about giant robots and the like.”
“And then, I’d imagine, they’ll lock you up,” Famine added. “With other humans. Violent ones.”
“You can’t leave me,” Mr Franks cried. “What about all those times we had? We were a team. Right?”
“I can see your lips moving,” Drake said. “But all I can hear is this noise. Like the quacking of ducks. Quack-quack-quack.”
Sirens screamed just a few streets away. War looked over to the horses gathered together near Famine’s mobility scooter.
“We’d better get a shifty on,” he said. “Don’t want to be here when the Bobbies arrive.”
Drake crossed to Mel. She put her arms round him and they hugged until the sounds of the sirens were too close for comfort. “We’d better go,” he said. “Are we... OK?”
Mel looked up at the ice sculpture of a horse behind her. She looked back at Drake. “We’re OK,” she said, and then she kissed him for the third time that day. Not that he was counting.
They climbed on to the horse. War was already sitting on his, while Famine waddled across to his scooter. Only Pestilence remained behind.
“You coming?” Drake asked.
“Yeah, just a second,” Pest told them. He looked down at Mr Franks, pinned beneath the weight of the robotic battle suit. “Quick question,” Pestilence said brightly. “I was just wondering, with you being so clever and everything...”
He raised his gloveless hands and brought them closer to the teacher’s face. “Have you ever heard of Guinea Worm Disease?”
Drake felt Mel’s arms go round him. He placed his hands over hers, just as War took hold of his own horse’s reins.
“Ready?” the bearded giant asked.
“Ready,” said Drake. “Oh, but, I was thinking...”
War glared at him expectantly. “First time for everything, I suppose.”
“Next week sometime, once everything’s settled down, if you fancy – and if we don’t, you know, get cast into Hell for not doing our jobs properly – I thought that maybe we could, I dunno, go fishing?”
War looked off into the distance, as if suddenly able to see some previously unnoticed future spread out there, just beyond the horizon. “Aye,” he said, at last. “Why not?”
Then he dug in his heels, flicked the reins, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode across the sky and made their way home.
HE LEAVES THE plains of the afterlives behind and arrives like a dark, creeping fog in a neatly cropped circle of grass. It is midnight, the dead of night. This is not unusual. To him, it is always midnight.
A square construction stands before him. Although he has never seen this place before, he has felt it, sensed it, many times over.
The shed. At last, he has reached the shed. He has reached the moment of his destiny.
Like a drop of black oil he oozes across the grass, past the flowerpots and up to the entrance. His shape shifts, his living cloak wraps round his solidifying form, and a hand that is no more than bleached bone raps three times on the wooden door.
There is a sound from inside. A clatter and then a thud. A thin man appears, his body dressed in white, his hands clad in a thin second skin.
“Hello?” the man asks, surprised, but not shocked by his skeletal appearance. “What can I do you for?”
The words hiss out of their own accord. Words he has waited to speak since being brought into existence. Words he was created to speak.
I aaaammm Deeeeeaaathhh...
The thin-faced man looks him up and down. “Oh,” he says. “So you’re supposed to be... And he’s not...” The thin-faced man looks him up and down for a second time. “Oh. Well, this is awkward.”
There is another voice, loud and booming, from within the shed. “Hurry up, it’s your turn. Who is it?” the voice demands.
“It’s, um, a big skeleton thing,” the thin-faced man says, “says he’s Death.”
From inside the shed, there is silence, and then a muttering, and then, more clearly. “Tell him we’ve got one.”
The thin-faced man turns back to him and smiles apologetically. “Sorry,” he says, “we’ve already got one.”
And then, quietly but firmly, he closes the door.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2012
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk
1
Text copyright © Barry Hutchison 2012
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ISBN: 978-0-00-744089-4
EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007440900
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
Copyright
About the Publisher