Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (top ebook reader TXT) 📕

deep into the night. I think Ada fell in love with you, that day. I think she loved you more than she ever loved me. Of course, she was ecstatic when our contact informed us that you were flying to Scotland. Ada insisted on being the one to collect you. She even called me, panicked, at the airport because she couldn’t find you. It took her the better part of the afternoon to trace your footsteps.

“What you did to her…” The butt of the elephant gun ignites new pain through Adam as Frank Sinclair presses it against Adam’s bloodied chest. “She was wrong to love you. And I was wrong to admire you. You are no man, Adam. You are as much an animal as Magnus, or any of the others. Just another beast pretending to be human.” Frank twists the rifle, heightening Adam’s agony. “My grandfather’s gun isn’t always immediately fatal. I’ve seen an elephant stumble around for hours before bleeding out. I suppose the same will apply to you. Hopefully, you’ll remain alive long enough to see this stadium when it’s empty. While your corpse rots, I will build a new paradise, in Ada’s honour. In God’s honour. And then I will hunt down all those beasts and fish and fowl pretending to be men, and make them remember what they really are.”

When Frank Sinclair walks away, he reveals the trucks filling the stadium, and the men working around them. They operate pneumatic arms and winches, and mechanical drills and shovels, and dig up all corners of the hidden garden. They pull trees, roots and all, from the earth, and they cut the grasses into squares and place those squares onto flat-beds, and they pull flowers up in clumps and secure them in jars, and Adam is helpless, pinned up against his tree until that, too, is torn up. He watches as the world whirls around him, shifting as he is rolled into an earthen pit, with the rain soaking through him and muddying him from head to toe.

Adam can feel his blood leaving him as it runs into the soil. But there, with his cheek against the cold earth, he can no longer see the garden as it is dismantled. He can only hear the whine of machinery, barely audible over the rain. Clenching his fists, he tries to breathe. Squeezing his eyelids shut, and gritting his teeth, Adam tries to stay alive just a little bit longer.

It takes an age for them to leave. Adam drags pained breaths through himself, concentrating on remaining conscious. And when there is only the rain rattling over the rafters, and the rumbling of the trucks has faded away, Adam inhales and exhales sharply, agonisingly, feeling his throat rattle. He is weak from blood loss, but he thinks, he hopes, that his lying prone here means that the earth has packed tight enough around his ruined chest to stop the worst of the bleeding.

Eve’s heart still beats inside him. Keeping him alive.

Slowly, so slowly, he draws himself up to his knees, keeping his arms folded across himself. Slower still, he stands in the ruins of the garden and blinks the rain from his eyes.

They have taken everything. The stadium is an empty earthen basin.

Dragging his legs, Adam takes steps towards the exit. He can feel his blood rolling warmly down his stomach and dripping across his legs, mingling with the chilled rain. Hauling himself one foot after another from the barren earth, he falls against the wall of the exit, waiting there for a wave of nausea and dizziness to dissipate. Just a little further, he thinks. Just outside the stadium is the place he needs.

Forcing himself onwards, he trudges unsteadily down the long corridor, past the trophy case and back out into the rains splashing the cracked tarmac of the stadium’s car park. Rolling himself through the broken turnstile at the entrance, he turns into the empty street beyond, where yellowing grasses stick up from gaps in the cracked pavement. Nobody drives up here any more. Nobody bothers coming this close to the stadium except for the children, and the rains have driven them away.

But there, on the corner, is the shattered box he needs.

Glass hangs in shards from its every broken window, and it is so covered in bright graffiti that it seems to glow in Adam’s vision. He shoulders the door open and stumbles inside, leaning heavily against the wet metal frame and raising the receiver to his ear. Somehow, the ruined handset still has a dial tone.

Fumbling through the pockets of his coat, he manages to locate the toffee wrapper. The number swims in his vision, so he grits his teeth and breathes until the pain focuses him, and unsteadily dials the number as it sharpens.

The phone buzzes at him. A faint voice tells him that he must insert coins into the dented machine. Adam grips the base of the metal box and wrenches at it until it comes free, spilling a silvery stream of money. Most tumbles through his bloodied wet fingers, but he manages to catch a few pieces; enough that when he feeds them into the slot, the handset against his ear starts to ring.

Adam slides down to the floor of the shattered phone box, crunching among the broken pieces of glass and ripped-up advertisements. The grey sky swirls unsteadily overhead, and the trills of the phone are minutes or hours apart. The sky is darkening as he watches it, but he soon realises that it’s unconsciousness trying to claim him, so he grips hold of a handful of glass until the pain startles the sky back into brightness. Just a few moments more, he thinks. Just a few moments more, and then it will be okay to die.

A click. A voice. “Hello?”

Adam opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He tries again, but when he manages a croaked word, he realises that it’s useless because he has dropped the handset. It lies