The Last Magician

Station

“It looked much better from the outside,” Jack said beside her, his eyes moving around the front office.

His first sight of the station had given Jack hope that there could still be some small part of humanity to be discovered, but on the other side of the door the same sad sight awaited them. The walls were bare of paint or paper, and only a few rotten tatters remained as a quite macabre foreboding sign of the deadness that had become the world. The floor was likewise a bare expanse, peppered only by the debris that had fallen from the ceiling, and the disintegrated piles that had presumably been office furniture and equipment.

It seemed unlikely that anyone would be working inside the office anytime soon. Then again, did a dead world need a police service? No people equalled no crime. Could that have been the reason behind the devastation; another Great Flood of God sent to wipe sin from the world? Had Earth simply been cleansed?

Jack knew he would not find the answer here, but there could be other useful items to be found among the broken furniture and cracked stone around them. He also realised that the pitiful vision before them could await their arrival wherever they travelled.

Jack moved to the remnants of the duty desk. He put a hand on the shattered desktop, its touch chillingly cold. In his mind he saw unfiled paperwork and a slobbish Constable with nothing better to do than drip mayonnaise onto his logbook.

”This is so not right,” Amanda said. ”It can’t really be like this everywhere, can it?”

Jack looked down the stone-white fragmented counter. The image in his mind was right, what lay before him, as Amanda had pointed out, was not. There should have been someone behind the desk; a corpse if nothing else.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I really don’t know.”

Jack considered his last thought. They had not seen a single corpse. If there were so many dead then what had become of them? The streets should have been strewn with rotting bodies and the air pungent with death.

Too many questions without answers. New questions arising every hour to further compound the impossibility of the situation. Without thinking about it Jack had another to add.

What had drawn them to the shell of the station?

There was at least a part answer to that one. The station had appeared to be almost untouched structurally, boosting their chances of finding other survivors. Their first glance inside had dispelled any thoughts that the building had miraculously escaped harm, so why had they not just turned and left?

A sense that something was there. It had been as simple as that; a gut instinct that they needed to remain.

The office appeared to be a single room, but the amount of rubble suggested it had not always been so. Most police stations he had seen kept a partition between the office and the public and he believed it could have been the same here. His memory refused to provide him any confirmation, and it seemed too insignificant to dwell on.

The floor contained a number of half-eaten drawers, their intestinal files in tatters and hanging out of the wreckage. It was curious how some things had been spared from total destruction while others had been reduced to dust.

”It really is going to like this everywhere,” Amanda said. Jack knew she was not posing a question.

Jack bent to the one set of drawers that remained intact. He locked his fingers around the worn handle, and pulled it towards him.

The handle, rotten as a six month old hard boiled egg, came loose in his hand, tearing off a large section of the drawer’s front. Jack placed the dismembered handle on the floor, watching as more of it broke away in small brown fragments.

He stooped down to the level of the gaping hole he had unintentionally created in the drawer. A stale, musty smell leaked from the wound; of something both old and forgotten. It was not pungent enough to make him nauseous, but it was not pleasant. If the choice had been there to make, Jack knew he would have turned away. That would never lead them to finding anything though. He was bound by the ties of his own making.

He squinted into the darkness, unable to pierce the black. Without forewarning of what lay within Jack refused to reach inside. He assumed anything living inside would have made its presence known when he had wrenched the handle off, but he was coming to believe that there were worse things to be touched than those alive.

The drawer had moved forward just enough to leave a small overhang along its bottom, just large enough for Jack to get a grip of. Slowly he pulled the drawer out, the notion that something could leap out at him testing his caution.

The interior of the drawer opened to his inquisition, providing little in the way of answers. Then he discovered the secret hidden within and allowed a sigh to escape him.

He pulled the drawer out of its housing, and dropped it onto the floor beside him. Amanda peered over his shoulder, eager to catch a glance of the find without getting too close. When her eyes fell on it, her face wrinkled in disgust and she turned away.

‘Oh that’s just fucking sick,’ she said, at which point Jack began to laugh. ‘And you’re no better.’

The laughter had felt good. In the thick of so much doubt and desolation, finding humour in small situations just reminded him he was still human. He smiled down at the mouldy green sandwich caked to the back of the drawer. He had expected much, and feared more, but this was an outcome he had not anticipated.

‘Should I keep it in case we get desperate?’ he asked.

‘I’m not even going to acknowledge that with an answer.’

Jack smiled broadly. He decided that there was nothing of use to be found in the drawers. He made to replace the removed drawer before realising there was little reason to tidy up after himself. He pushed it to one side and raised to his feet again.

Directly opposite where he stood, there was a door.

He couldn’t remember seeing it when they entered the station, but there had been plenty vying for his attention. It was an easy thing to have missed..

‘Any guesses what’s through there?’ he asked.

‘Cells?’

‘I suppose—’

‘Can you hear me out there?’

Jack exchanged a surprised glance with Amanda then they both stared at the door. The muffled voice, definitely male, had come from beyond it; of that there was no doubt. The question was who did it belong to?

And what they were doing there?

There was a heavy silence of expectation. Jack concentrated on the door. If it had not been for his exchanging of glances with Amanda, he would have doubted the voice had been anything more than an audible mirage.

‘Is someone there?’

Any seeds of doubt withered right then.

Someone was in the cells.