On the marble floors of the library building Ben could wheel himself quite easily. Danny and Ben softly made their way toward the science fiction section. All was quiet apart from the hum of Danny’s small electric motor. The industrious quiet of people reading echoed against the book-lined walls.
Danny loved books: they made him feel secure. He would turn the pages using a combination of his nose and tongue. Danny even loved the smell of books. Danny was one of the few people who actually tasted all his books as well as read them, not being a person to do anything by halves. Danny could tell if he was going to like a particular book just by its smell.
Danny and Ben hung out for a while at the young-adult fiction aisle. A beautiful female librarian, with poorly dyed short blondish hair and the tiniest crook in her petite nose smiled at Danny. Danny felt a little rush of warmth travel right through him. He looked up at the ancient skylights. They were the antique kind that has long wooden sticks with which to adjust their opening.
The sun came out from behind the clouds momentarily and shone its dappled light through the old windows and down upon the books. Danny spotted a new title by his favourite author and made a mental note to return. But first, he had business to attend.
‘Can you see that Ben,’ whispered Danny.
‘See what?’
‘The blood Ben, the blood,’ continued Danny telepathically.
‘You mean that red stuff dripping out of that book there?’
‘That'd be it. What do you think it means?’
‘Don't think anyone else can see it. That old guy just stepped through a puddle of the stuff and never even slipped.’
‘And it's not on his shoes either.’
‘It’s not marking ‘cos it isn’t of this realm Dan. Its ethereal blood.’
‘Oh,’ replied Danny quietly. ‘We've got to follow that trail then Ben.’
‘Had a feeling you'd say that.’
Danny and Ben noted the book which was dripping blood. Once there, they could see a larger pool coming from two books, sat side by side in the next aisle - history. Once they reached the history section, Danny stopped. He could see that Ben was thinking, 'and now what?' Danny felt a brief wave of sadness for Ben. Here was a young man with the patience of a wasp, trapped inside the body of a human – a body that hardly worked.
Danny waited. Right now, there was no need to rush. A guy in his fifties wearing a formal grey jacket was ambling down the next aisle. He pulled a book off the third shelf down. From behind the book came a great rush of blood sweeping over the man. It formed a quickly growing flood upon the floor.
‘Quick, Ben, the actual entrance is in the next aisle.’
Danny and Ben made their way as quickly as Ben's tiny arms could propel him. Danny waited anxiously by the top of the aisle. The red-jacketed man walked obliviously through the raging torrent of blood to emerge bone-dry by the astonished Danny. When Ben caught up with him, Danny leant across and put his weather-worn, slightly over-sized face right next to Ben's ear. The sound of blood rushing in an avalanche of fluid poured over them.
‘Just wheel right into the blood-fall Ben, then look up and open your eyes. We'll do it together. You must open your eyes at the exact same time as me. And we must be in physical contact. You hold my hand. I'll squeeze three times then you should open your eyes. Otherwise there is no telling where we might end up. The blood of the cosmos – it could take us anywhere.’
‘How'd you know all this?’ said Ben, who was nearly in tears.
‘I don't know, I really don't know. It comes from somewhere. We'll just have to trust me I guess.’
‘Mmhm,’ thought Ben, who although he trusted Danny more than anyone, was never entirely convinced of anything.
The two wheelchairs inched into the flowing torrent of blood, that only they could see. The boys were soaked to the skin, their clothes as heavy as molten iron. Ben reached out to Danny and in unison they slowly craned their heads upwards and opened their eyes. Their chairs seemed to rise up into the blood-filled air and it felt like they were spinning. The blood pulsated.
Completely unaware of the nearby drama the junior librarian was calmly returning books to their rightful places. Turning a corner she noticed the two young lads. Their wheelchairs, though stationary, appeared to be shaking. The metal frames were glowing white-hot. Their eyes were open but moving around in their sockets alarmingly. She could see a red glowing see-through field that pulsated all around them.
Heart thudding fast she backed away and then ran toward the returns desk. She picked up the phone and dialled for an ambulance.
‘Emergency, which service do you require?’ said the calm, female voice.
‘Ambul..,’ the phone-line had gone dead.
The daze the librarian felt was pierced by a loud roaring noise from above. She looked up through the sky-lights to see a black military helicopter circling low above the library. The phone fell from her hands emitting radio fuzz. The receiver swung like a pendulum against the side of the desk. A sudden thud of military boot against door and some half dozen black-clad men burst through into the library. The leader jumped over the turnstile, kicked her feet from under her and flung her forcefully to the ground.
‘ON THE FLOOR! FACE DOWN! Nobody moves! Anybody moves and you're all bloody DEAD’ yelled the leader.
The men moved away from her. Her face scratched against the dust of the floor. She could just about make out that the men had now surrounded the red force-field that was around the two boys. They seemed totally intent on the field and its occupants. She wondered if there was a man stood guard behind her. Chancing it she began using the tips of her fingers, elbows and toes as she edged herself backward toward the rear of the returns desk. Any moment now she thought, they'll see me and riddle my body with bullets. Something deep inside, despite her frozen terror, told her to move as if her life depended on it. She knew she had to hide. She would never have considered herself brave normally, yet here she was disobeying a gang of armed men.
The leader of the group reached into his backpack and pulled out a strange tube-like gun device. It had odd-shaped buttons and luminescent red geometric lines, vaguely silicon chip-like in appearance, etched upon its silken steel surface. He snapped it open and extended it.
The military helicopter continued to hover above the roof of the library. Four black clad men jumped from the helicopter and set up a white dish with a long white tube extending from its middle. They appeared to be listening to instructions on their headsets as they aligned the tube. One of the rooftop figures took a thick wire from the white dish. He put his boot through the skylight and dropped the wire down into the library.
The leader of the men in the library took the other end of the wire and fed it into his gun-type tube device. ‘Remember. Timing. Get it RIGHT!’ the man billowed threateningly.
‘Position ONE,’ the leader yelled. The men all stuck their left feet into the red force field. The men screamed internally but only beads of sweat revealed their pain. Each man had been trained in hypnotic mind control techniques and could withstand pain without blinking an eye. The enormous energy of this field threatened to overwhelm these soldiers.
‘Position TWO’
The men held their hands one to the next forming a circle around the force-field. The field turned to an angry incandescent white that flowed over the men. Blue glistening fiery liquid throbbed slowly down the wire from the roof light and into the gun-like tube the leader held on his shoulders. The men were sweating and shaking slightly. Their leader was stood slightly back from the others. The tube-gun he held was pointed into the centre of the field.
‘ENERGISE!’ shouted the leader. The men closed their eyes and braced themselves. Blue energy shot out the gun and propelled its way furiously into the force-field containing Danny and Ben. The field now alternated between white and red. It showered angry sparks of molten green across the library. The leader battled for control of the snaking arm of energy caught between the gun-tube and the field.
‘WAIT FOR IT! Wait for it. OK. Enter-on-THREE, TWO, ONE. GO!’
The group of men jumped as a single body into the field. Immediately afterwards the leader threw the gun-tube to one side, yanked the skin from his forehead to reveal a black oval eye with a red diamond shaped pupil. He pressed it. His aura became an incandescent white. He dived head first into the energy-field following his men. The library filled with a blinding yellow light. Simultaneously the helicopter took off into the sky trailing the wire and ripping the skylight to shreds.
Outside the library, two metallic black Nissan Navara pick-up trucks screeched to a perfectly synchronised halt on the cobbled road. The darkened-windowed doors were flung open in split-second co-ordination. Four men in black overalls jumped out from each vehicle and marched quickly into the library. They were carrying various bags and cases. Seven of the men split up and marched through the library sections. They walked from dazed person to the next, barked, ‘Emergency services,’ and administered what looked like an oxygen mask. The person was immediately unconscious.
The eighth man had been in the basement and had found the piping he was looking for. He attached a small plastic device to the pipe, pressed a button on his wristwatch and ran. At the same time the wristwatches of the other men bleeped loudly. They stopped what they were doing and ran toward the entrance. One of the men scooped up the discarded tube-gun on his way out.
The junior librarian was still hiding under the returns desk. The men in the black overalls hadn't seen her on their rounds. The next thing she knew there was a massive explosion, the blast knocking her off the floor where she knelt and slamming her into the underside of the desk.