Eeny Meeny

113

There was no victory. No happiness. There wasn’t even a sense of relief. Charlie had survived. She would live. Her baby would live. But the old Charlie was dead and buried. There was no coming back from this.

She lay on the tarmac, the rain pouring down on her. Her brain was reeling. Shock mingled with loathing. Slowly exhaustion took hold. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. The rain tumbled into her parched, bleeding mouth. A momentary sense of relief, of life flooding through her and then oblivion. Her eyes closed, her brain drifting, she felt herself being sucked underwater, pulled into a darkness that was comforting as well as debilitating.

Then a voice. A weird, distant mechanical voice. Charlie tried to pull herself out of the abyss, but exhaustion gripped her. There it was again. The voice, urgent and insistent. She managed to open one eye. But there was no one there.

‘Where are you? Please respond.’ The desperate voice was becoming clear now.

Charlie opened the other eye, managing to lift her head off the ground.

Helen’s police radio, lying on the floor by her discarded bike. And the voice… the voice was DC Bridges. Searching for her.

Perhaps it wasn’t all over. Perhaps Charlie did have a shot at redemption after all. She knew she had to try. She hauled herself up, then collapsed to her knees. Her body was shaking, her teeth chattering. She was seeing double. But she had to make it to the radio somehow.