The Last Magician

Jack and Kurt

Kurt waited for Jack to ease through into the collapsed room on the other side of the wall.

Torn and broken masonry littered the floor and all around pale shafts of light peeked through the wounds in the structure. A number of cracks and fissures lay in crazy patterns across the grey stone floor, signs of the numerous earth shakes that had played at least a small part in the devastation of the land.

“Cosy isn’t it?” Kurt said in his usual dry tone.

“Yeah,” Jack replied. “A regular home from home.”

Together they edged forward into the building, crouched low to avoid brutal and jagged metal struts that threatened to gouge the eyes and slice the flesh of the unwary.

Beneath their feet stone crumbled into powder and the constant hiss of settling dust underlined the quiet.

“Are you actually expecting to find anything in here?” Kurt asked, stepping over a trailing cable.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Jack said, his voice distracted. “Just when it seems like you work something out, it all changes again.”

“Most things are dead. We’re alive. Everything else has gone to hell. What more is there to it?”

“A lot more. This kind of thing doesn’t just happen. There has to be a reason why there is no one else here; why everything looks evil and contaminated; why some yellow fucking mushroom tried to eat my face off!”

“Ok, ok,” Kurt said. “So shit happened and this is the result. Don’t you remember all those nukes everyone said Russia was sitting on? Maybe they finally fired a couple off.”

Only a short time earlier, Jack knew he would not have known what a nuke was, possibly not even where Russia was. His lost memories had since returned abundantly. There would no doubt be gaps somewhere along the timeline of his recollection, but the blank canvass of recent events remained the most frustrating void.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “Something just tells me it’s more…I don’t know. More supernatural perhaps.”

“You think we’ve been attacked by aliens, don’t you?” Kurt smiled.

“Not exactly what I was thinking, but just something that isn’t as easy to explain as someone shooting off a rocket. There’s that light and the earthquakes. What the hell are they all about?”

“You want me to say I don’t know, don’t you? Well, I guess that’s all I can say because I don’t have the slightest idea what they are. I just know I don’t really want to be inside here where another one comes along.”

Jack had not considered what would happen if the ground around them shook as violently as in the police cell. The collapsed walls and torn metal around them would be miraculous to withstand another shake, and he had to admit Kurt had a point.

They moved further inside, the air hazy and gritty against the eyes. Just a short distance ahead lay what appeared to e shelving units. Many lay crushed beneath huge chunks of stone, others buried under heaps of rubble and dust but a small handful seemed to have escaped serious damage other than being toppled.

“Do you think it’s sensible to stay together?” Jack asked.

“When did I become the oracle?” Kurt shot back. “I’m not here to make decisions like that. These shoulders aren’t made to take the burden of you being flattened when I send you down the wrong aisle. You tell me whether we should stay together.”

Jack gave a shallow laugh. “I guess this is where the audience scream at the screen.”

“Come again?”

“Movies. TV. You remember those things where the girl always went outside alone in the middle of the night to look for the maniac and you would sit there thinking what a dumb bitch she was?”

“You’re saying we’re a couple of girls?” Kurt said.

Jack grinned. “You take that one sweetheart and yell if you find Fred Krueger.”

The aisles were narrow, especially those partially under rubble, and the floor underfoot shifted occasionally with the weight of the two men. Kurt moved down the aisle to their left, while Jack headed into the one to its direct right.

Jack couldn’t help but think of some of the movies he had inadvertently conjured into his mind. He could recall watching a number of cheap late night flicks, aimed at the early morning crowd who only wanted to see sex or violence while they drank themselves into a near coma. He could also recall thinking that he would never act the way the curious teenagers always did.

Then again, he hadn’t expected to find himself in such a situation either. Perhaps the only way to survive was to do what came naturally at the time. It had served them all well so far.
In the adjacent aisle, Kurt found his thoughts dwelling on what he knew of his own past. There were more grey areas than he liked, and there certainly seemed to be more blanks in his mind than in Jack’s. Maybe that was why they all looked to Jack as their leader. He seemed to be their lynchpin. To Kurt’s knowledge Jack had come to them all, found them all, rather than the other way around.

To Kurt, at least, Jack was a saviour.

His thoughts turned to his time alone in the cell Jack and Amanda had discovered him in. Kurt still couldn’t remember how he had ended up there, or how long he had been locked up like a dangerous animal.

It was this last notion which concerned him most. Jack had threatened him during their first meeting, questioning why he had been under police arrest, if he could be trusted, if he was dangerous. Jack’s moment of doubt had passed quickly, but Kurt knew that until his memories developed he would never be able to answer the question honestly.

“Kurt!”

The harsh whisper directly by his shoulder sent Kurt reeling into an exposed girder.

He looked up to see Jack peering through a gap in the upright shelving. A rogue thought urged him to laugh at his overreaction, but his pride stepped in to hold it back.

“Jesus fucking– ”

“Shhh!” Jack hissed, raising a finger to his lips to emphasise the point.

What? Kurt mouthed, raising his shoulders in question.

Jack didn’t speak but moved his finger to flick his ear.

Listen.

Kurt held his breath, listening for whatever had caught Jack’s attention. The pounding of his racing heart thudding in his ears distorted the quiet making it hard to hear what he was meant to be listening for.

Then he did hear it. The look in Jack’s eyes said that was what he had been meant to hear. It would have been so easy to dismiss as just the settling of debris or toppling stone. Kurt knew he might have noticed it sooner if he hadn’t been lost in his thoughts.

It was the sound of pattering feet.

Many pattering feet.

And they sounded to be coming from just a short distance away.

Maybe Jack had been right. They shouldn’t have split up.