"Joel! Joel!"
Or did he imagine that? Had he imagined, too, the prayer from Loyer's lips, and the signs in the radiant faces of the babies held high to watch the runners pass?
As they turned into Whitehall Frank McCloud glanced confidentially over his shoulder and Hell took him.
It was sudden: it was simple.
He stumbled, an icy hand in his chest crushing the life out of him. Joel slowed as he approached the man. His face was purple: his lips foamy.
"McCloud," he said, and stopped to stare in his great rival's thin face.
McCloud looked up at him from behind a veil of smoke that had turned his grey eyes ochre. Joel reached down to help him.
"Don't touch me," McCloud growled. The filament vessels in his eyes bulged and bled.
"Cramp?" asked Joel. "Is it cramp?"
"Run, you bastard, run," McCloud was saying at him, as the hand in his innards seized his life out. He was oozing blood through the pores on his face now, weeping red tears. "Run. And don't look back. For Christ's sake, don't look back."
"What is it?"
"Run for your life!"
The words weren't requests but imperatives.
Run.
Not for gold or glory. Just to live.
Joel glanced up, suddenly aware that there was some huge-headed thing at his back, cold breath on his neck.
He picked up his heels and ran.
"— Well, things aren't going so well for the runners here, Jim. After Loyer going down so sensationally, now Frank McCloud has stumbled too. I've never seen anything quite like it. But he seems to have had a few words with Joel Jones as he ran past, so he must be OK."
McCloud was dead by the time they put him in the ambulance, and putrefied by the following morning.
Joel ran. Jesus, did he run. The sun had become ferocious in his face, washing the colour out of the cheering crowds, out of the faces, out of the flags. Everything was one sheet of noise, drained of humanity.
Joel knew the feeling that was coming over him, the sense of dislocation that accompanied fatigue and over-oxygenation. He was running in a bubble of his own consciousness, thinking, sweating, suffering by himself, for himself, in the name of himself.
And it wasn't so bad, this being alone. Songs began to fill his head: snatches of hymns, sweet phrases from love songs, dirty rhymes. His self idled, and his dream-mind, unnamed and fearless, took over.
Ahead, washed by the same white rain of light, was Voight. That was the enemy, that was the thing to be surpassed. Voight, with his shining crucifix rocking in the sun. He could do it, as long as he didn't look, as long as he didn't look —Behind him.
Burgess opened the door of the Mercedes and climbed in. Time had been wasted: valuable time. He should be at the Houses of Parliament, at the finishing line, ready to welcome the runners home. There was a scene to play, in which he would pretend the mild and smiling face of democracy. And tomorrow? Not so mild.
His hands were clammy with excitement, and his pinstripe suit smelt of the goat-skin coat he was obliged to wear in the room. Still, nobody would notice; and even if they did what English-man would be so impolite to mention that he smelt goaty?
He hated the Lower Chamber, the perpetual ice, that damn yawning hole with its distant sound of loss. But all that was over now. He'd made his oblations, he'd shown his utter and ceaseless adoration of the pit; now it was time to reap the rewards.
As they drove, he thought of his many sacrifices to ambition. At first, minor stuff: kittens and cockerels. Later, he was to discover how ridiculous they thought such gestures were. But at the beginning he'd been innocent: not knowing what to give or how to give it. They began to make their requirements clear as the years went by, and he, in time, learnt to practice the etiquette of selling his soul. His self mortifications were studiously planned and immaculately staged, though they had left him without nipples or the hope of children. It was worth the pain, though: the power came to him by degrees. A triple first at Oxford, a wife endowed beyond the dreams of priapism, a seat in Parliament, and soon, soon enough, the country itself.
The cauterized stumps of his thumbs ached, as they often did when he was nervous. Idly, he sucked on one.
"— Well We're now in the closing stages of what really has been one hell of a race, eh, Jim?"
"Oh yes, It's really been a revelation, hasn't it? Voight is really the outsider of the field; and here he is streaking away from the competition without much effort. Of course, Jones made the unselfish gesture of checking with Frank McCloud that he was indeed all right after that bad fall of his, and that put him behind."
"It's lost the race for Jones really, hasn't it?"
"I think that's right. I think it lost the race for him."
"This is a charity race, of course."
"Absolutely. And in a situation like this it's not whether you win or lose —"
"It's how you play the game."
"Right."
"Right."
"Well they're both in sight of the Houses of Parliament now as they come round the bend of Whitehall. And the crowds are cheering their boy on, but I really think it's a lost cause —"
"Mind you, he brought something special out of the bag in Sweden."
"He did. He did."
"Maybe he'll do it again."
Joel ran, and the gap between himself and Voight was beginning to close. He concentrated on the man's back, his eyes boring into his shirt, learning his rhythm, looking for weaknesses.
There was a slowing there. The man was not as fast as he had been. An unevenness had crept into his stride, a sure sign of fatigue.
He could take him. With courage, he could take him.
And Kinderman. He'd forgotten about Kinderman. Without thinking, Joel glanced over his shoulder and looked behind him.
Kinderman was way back, still keeping his steady marathon runner's pace unchanged. But there was something else behind Joeclass="underline" another runner, almost on his heels; ghostly, vast.
He averted his eyes and stared ahead, cursing his stupidity.
He was gaining on Voight with every pace. The man was really running out of steam, quite clearly. Joel knew he could take him for certain, if he worked at it. Forget his pursuer, whatever it was, forget everything except overtaking Voight.
But the sight at his back wouldn't leave his head.
"Don't look back": McCloud's words. Too late, he'd done it. Better to know then who this phantom was.
He looked again.
At first he saw nothing, just Kinderman jogging along. And then the ghost runner appeared once more and he knew what had brought McCloud and Loyer down.
It was no runner, living or dead. It wasn't even human. A smoky body, and yawning darkness for its head, it was Hell itself that was pressing on him.
"Don't look back."
Its mouth, if mouth it was, was open. Breath so cold it made Joel gasp, swirled around him. That was why Loyer had muttered prayers as he ran. Much good it had done him; death had come anyway.
Joel looked away, not caring to see Hell so close, trying to ignore the sudden weakness in his knees.
Now Voight, too, was glancing behind him. The look on his face was dark and uneasy: and Joel knew somehow that he belonged to Hell, that the shadow behind him was Voight's master.
"Voight. Voight. Voight. Voight—" Joel expelled the word with every stride.
Voight heard his name being spoken.
"Black bastard," he said aloud.
Joel's stride lengthened a little. He was within two metres of Hell's runner.
"Look....ehind... You," said Voight.
"I see it."
"It's... come... for... you."
The words were mere melodrama: two-dimensional. He was master of his body wasn't he? And he was not afraid of darkness, he was painted in it. Wasn't that what made him less than human as far as so many people were concerned? Or more, more than human; bloodier, sweatier, fleshier. More arm, more leg, more head. More strength, more appetite. What could Hell do? Eat him? He'd taste foul on the palate. Freeze him? He was too hot-blooded, too fast, too living.