Free The Relic Keeper by N David Anderson

and his eyes shut, trying not to get too stressed by the noise of his two girls. And then the nauseous feeling swept over him, steadily and suddenly. He felt a sharp pain in the pit of his stomach, which seemed to move about his body strangely.
    “Matty? Matty, are you ok?” Paula had asked. He could hear her, but she seemed far away.
    “I just need to sleep. I think I ate something bad.” His heart was racing and there was tingling sensation creeping down his left arm.
    “Matty, you don’t look well. You look…grey.”
    “Daddy, will you take me to see the horses at the farm tomorrow?”
    “Not now, Jessie love,” said Paula, bundling the little girl away.
    Mathew couldn’t move. Paula had looked at him concerned. Of course, she’d seen that look before. Mathew imagined the vacant expression, the sallow complexion and that strangely blue tint to the lips. He must have looked like her grandfather just before he died.
    “Matty? Can you hear me? Matty?” Mathew could hear the panic rise in her throat and her voice start to tremble. “Jessie, I want you to get mummy the telephone right now.” The little girl had watched her parents. What would she be thinking? She’d never seen anything like this. “Jessie. The phone? Now!” Mathew remembered his head feeling heavy and rolling back awkwardly…
    The haze clouded across Mathew’s mind as the hospital room swept back into focus. Absently he shook his head, as if the action would clear the image of the memory. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Both his girls were gone, and he was alone and lost. He lay his head back and let the sedatives wash over his mind, hardly noticing the tear that cut a lonely course down the side of his face.

14
    Deon slumped into the chair in the centre of the room. The apartment was smaller than he remembered it; it had been well over two years since he’d last stayed here. Despite several treatments sometime earlier there was still a damp patch in the far corner and the wooden window surround was beginning to show signs of rot. The place smelt of abandonment. The wall lighting was out; but then he hadn’t paid a maintenance fee in years so that was to be expected. The only light came through the small window against one wall, and as this overlooked the rear wall of another tenement very little sunlight came through this. Deon switched on his flashlight and the room brightened to reveal all its dark corners. It was, he thought, rather like living in a subterranean cave, full of dark and foreboding crevices and surrounded by unfriendly and potentially dangerous neighbours. He’d passed through the passageways of teenage gangs and pushers on the way to the apartment. They stared at him with their narcotic gaze as he passed by and he kept his eyes ahead and concentrated on not looking intimidated. He had even thought of stopping and trying to get some hash from one of the boys, but thought better of it. This was not the time to lose concentration. He flipped open his pipe, inserted a tobacco tab and activated it, breathing in the nicotine and trying not to think too hard about taste of the cannabis that he hadn’t bought. And while he smoked he looked out of the window at the brick wall opposite and thought about the events of the last three days.
    He had been locked into the burning building and had tried to find Nasreen, but with no success. As the heat had become more intense he’d been forced into a corner of the building and had somehow managed to scramble up an old shelving unit to a small boarded up window. He’d been able to work the wooden slats loose and kick out enough of the glass to allow himself to slip through. From this viewpoint he could see most of Unit. It was burning fiercely, the flames casting strange shadows and illuminating the area around the fort. Each of the many separate buildings was ablaze, as were the few vehicles around the complex. There was no sign of the people he’d heard screaming earlier,