“When we arrive,” I breathe, “don’t stop, just run.”

“Don’t need to tell me, sweetheart.”

I flinch. A first mate doesn’t say “sweetheart” to his captain.

It’s wrong, the wrong words from the wrong mouth, it is ugly.

In another time, another place, I would say something.

Not tonight.

Slow as an ox, stately as a fattened cow, I ease us in.

Janus didn’t bother with the rope, waited for the ship to slow to walking pace and jumped. I killed the engines and, as we bounced against the quay, I too hopped overboard, landing awkwardly on crooked ankles, steadying myself and pushing up, heading towards land.

Janus was already running for the metal fence that ringed the quay, while behind us, someone, a confused waiter, seeing his captain and first mate depart, shouted, “Hey!”

I kept running, unsure where I was, heading for the bright lights of the city, a silent causeway between us and it, cranes overhead, yellow beasts for hauling containers the size of houses, cars parked on the other side of the fence, low buildings with ominous messages such as CUSTOMS & IMMIGRATION–OBEY ALL COMMANDS nailed to the door. Janus was ahead, running between great walls of crates, through the sodium-stained night towards the metal gate and the bright road beyond, and it occurred to me that no one might have spotted us, safe in our skins, until the moment when we ran.

“Janus!” I called as his footsteps slapped in the night. “Janus!”

Janus, the gate a few metres away, half-turned to look back at me and fell.

There was the sound of an angry wasp biting a distracted bear, and Janus was on the ground, legs crooked beneath him. For a moment I couldn’t see the blood, but as I pressed my back against the crate wall and stared at the body lying not ten feet from my knocking knees, it began to spread. Fast at first, then somehow slower as the area it covered grew wider, the blood came from his back, from the hole the bullet had torn through his lung, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that ghosts are predictable. Mark your target, take them out. Whoever was shooting at us knew our natures.

I looked and saw only dark tunnels of towering crates, a chain fence and a padlocked gate. Janus lay just out in the open, head rolled towards me, mouth working, blood and foam on his lips, trying to speak. I eased closer, back still pressed against the containers, until I was a foot and a half from him.

“Ca… ca… ca…”

The beginning of a sound that might have been a name.

Janus’ left hand was outstretched to me, right hand limp as his life ran away, the breath bubbling up through the shattered remnants of his ribcage. I could almost reach his hand without exposing myself, grab it from cover. The blood trickled against the toe of my shoe.

I reached out, caught Janus’ arm by the wrist, pulling with all my might, dragging his body through the blood, little waves of it shifting beneath him as the body began to turn.

A gun fired and Janus’ body jerked. I saw his eyes go wide, a sharp punching-out of breath, felt the blood splatter against my face as the bullet slammed into his chest and

Janus jumped.

Into the only body that was available.

I screamed and so did Janus, the two of us in one falling back against the crate, shrieking as I pressed my hands against my head and Janus pulled my knees to our chin and we screamed to drown out the shrieking in my ears and screamed to silence the bursting in our brain and screamed because all the little blood vessels behind our eyes were peeling away from the optic nerve and our tear ducts were filling with iron and our nose was flooding with hot blood and our body was kicking and tearing against itself and I tried to shriek,

“Janus!”

but the body by my side was dead and someone else was howling with my tongue, the breath ripping my chest in two.

“Can’t… get the… / Help! / Can’t stop / can’t breathe!”

With all the strength I had, I pushed myself from the wall, flopping on to hands and knees, and Janus tried to pick me up, one knee buckling and another dragging up, and I screamed, “Gunman! Crane / gotta move / body! Get body!” as Janus hauled us to our feet. Blood was running down my face, spilling from my nose as vessels ruptured. Pain lanced through my side as some internal piece of machinery tried, and failed, to maintain its usual function, but the brain wasn’t having any of it, every part, every neuron, fit to bursting as Janus took a step, took another and I shrieked,

“Can’t… breathe! / then… breathe!”

We tumbled again as I tried to stop our legs, focus only on getting air into my lungs, on that single conscious act of inhalation, and I managed to drag down a lungful before Janus, giddy with terror, pushed us back on to our feet and, falling, running, staggering, pulled us away from his already chilling corpse.

Janus ran, and I breathed, and tried not to use my eyes, filled with blood, or my ears, singing where the drums were beginning to rupture. Away from the crane, we saw a strip of metal fence and Janus ran towards it, but I managed to gasp, “No!” and drop us to the ground.

“Got to run / sniper on the crane / got to get / need a body! / run / sniper!”

I rolled on to my side, clasping my knees to my chest in an effort to hold Janus down. “Speak / now! / listen! / now! / listen to me! Listen! There’s… sniper… gotta be / dying / I know / body dying! / listen! / gotta get out / listen! We’re not getting over fence, saw… sheds back / back? / way we came few hundred yards / dying! / few hundred, get to shed, call cops / cops? / flesh with guns! / run!”

Janus hauled me to my feet and I let him, dedicated every thought I had through the red haze of pain to breathing, just breathing, let him manage the rest, arms, feet, even the direction as we stumbled through the dark. The customs sheds lay, grey blots on a grey land, visible between the crates, and as we neared them I felt something hot and sharp down my side, and we screamed but kept running as another part, muscle, organ, nerve, didn’t matter, gave up trying.

“Run,” I whispered as we paused on the edge of the crates. Ten yards between us and the shed, ten open yards and a sniper at our back. “Run!”

Janus ran and so did I, our legs flying as we tore across the ground and something bit the concrete by my back, smacked into the wall ahead of us, but the first was wide to the left, the second wide to the right, and we ran and Janus slammed our shoulder into the door of the cabin, which cracked and collapsed beneath our weight, tipping us shoulder first into the musty gloom within.

For a moment I lay as the blood seeped into my mouth and Janus shrieked and buzzed around my mind and tongue. I managed to open my eyes long enough to see a beige phone hanging on the wall, and hand over hand crawled towards it, each limb dressed in lead, each movement a kick against a wall, until Janus too seemed to see my intention and with a sudden surge forward propelled us to the phone.

911.

The ringing in my shattered eardrums sent bubbles through my face, I could feel them burst and pop inside my cheeks, along the line of my jaw, and as the operator came on to the line another surge of pain kicked through us and I nearly dropped the phone from my bloody hand.

“Help me / dying! / port / help me! / gun / help!”

A bullet smashed through the window above our head and with a shriek Janus dropped the phone and I dropped us, landing curled up on the floor, head in my hands. I pressed against my skull in case it burst even without the help of lead, and as the phone hung swinging by its cable I screamed, “Get me a fucking body!”

Another bullet slammed into the table behind me, and it occurred to me suddenly that these shots weren’t muffled, weren’t the silent wasp of a sniper’s rifle, but were a revolver, high calibre, and getting closer.