Tooth and Nail

by Chris Bonnello

  To Gracie at that moment, it just meant knowing his way around a village. Jack found his way to School Lane, and the Hunters’ house was there as promised.

  A little part of Jack had expected the house to look welcoming, perhaps for the grass to be more colourful than he remembered or the windows to look cleaner. But nothing special awaited them. The two-storey building looked as dulled and silent as before, indifferent to the return of an old visitor. Jack walked up the garden path and pushed the front door open, holding his breath to avoid choking on the dust.

  Dust. Unless Ewan had used a different entrance, he had not arrived yet.

  Eight y per cent of dust is human sk in. Maybe some of this is ours.

  Maybe a part of Charlie still exists here.

  ‘You OK, Jack?’ Gracie whispered.

  Apparently he hadn’t hidden his misery as well as he had thought.

  ‘Charlie spent his last night on Earth here,’ he answered.

  ‘I thought he made it to New London?’ she asked. ‘And died three days later?’

  ‘I don’t count that as Earth.’

  Jack made his way to the living room, and his eyes met the spot on the floor that had been his bed three weeks earlier. He wondered what Ewan’s reaction would be once he arrived, whether his own memories would be as specific, and his emotions just as provoked. It took Jack a moment to remember that he was supposed to check the house for clones, rather than taking a trip down Crap Memory Lane.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ asked Gracie.

  ‘You just did.’

  She sighed behind him.

  ‘Why do you always do things like that?’

  ‘Is that your real question, or another supplementary one?’

  Gracie’s next sigh was more of a snarl. Jack closed his eyes, realising that it wasn’t the best time for his brand of humour.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Did you know Charlie well?’ asked Gracie.

  ‘I did towards the end.’

  ‘Was he nice?’

  Jack sighed. Eleven months had passed between Takeover Day and Charlie Coleman’s death, and even after spending so much time in such cramped conditions, there were still people in Spitfire’s Rise he hadn’t got to know.

  ‘He was Charlie, I guess.’

  ‘But was he nice?’

  ‘He was… endearing. I don’t think “nice” was the best word to describe him. But he had his good sides, even if you had to look for them.’

  Gracie sat down on the faded sofa, her face indecipherable.

  ‘I didn’t speak to him. Not once.’

  ‘He was a decent guy,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a shame you two didn’t get to know each other.’

  Gracie shrugged, and gave her response in a low, subdued tone.

  ‘I don’t think either of us missed out on much.’

  Jack wasn’t prepared for that kind of answer. He took a deep breath, and then coughed out a mouthful of dust.

  Gracie was sad about herself, and Jack wasn’t sure why. He was an expert at being kind and caring, but knew nothing about how to show kindness and care. Sometimes when people were sad they wanted to talk about it, and sometimes they wanted to be left alone. And whichever Jack gambled on, he always seemed to get it wrong. It was a heartbreaking position to be in: wanting so deeply to help people in need, but constantly being scorned for trying and failing. Jack could follow any instruction manual to perfection, but people were more difficult than machines.

  In the end, he put a hand on Gracie’s shoulder and gave what he thought was a sympathetic smile. It seemed like the action least likely to be offensive.

  ‘I’m going to check upstairs, and keep watch on the street,’ he said. ‘Ewan shouldn’t be far away. Stay down here and have a rest if you like. You deserve it.’

  Gracie said nothing, and Jack couldn’t tell whether his response had been the right one. But either way, the house needed guarding. And he had to admit, he was anxious about why Ewan hadn’t reached the house first.

  *

  Five o’clock came and went, and Ewan was nowhere to be seen.

  Half past five came and went, and daylight began to fade.

  Six o’clock came, and Jack made a phone call to comms to check if they had heard anything. The call did nothing but make Shannon scared. Even Alex’s voice seemed to lose its cool.

  By half past six, Jack’s nerves had turned to clear and simple panic.

  Ewan remembered the way, didn’t he? He just needs to find a familiar road and take the same route as before.

  Was he in a fit state to agree when I told him the plan ?

  Is he deliberately taking his time? Does he need the cool-off period that badly?

  There was a creak at the top of the stairs behind him. Jack didn’t worry: the footstep was so loud that it couldn’t have been made by someone sneaking up on him. He turned around and saw Gracie, her hands trembling and eyes pointed at the carpet.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘You OK, Gracie?’

  At first she gave no answer. But just before Jack turned his head back to guard the approach to the house again, she spluttered her words out.

  ‘Did I kill Raj?’

  Jack stared back in confusion.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did Ewan mean it? Is it my fault he died?’

  Jack gave a long sigh.

  ‘Ewan was angry because he’d just lost a friend. He was saying it out of hurt, nothing more.’

  ‘But he’s right… if I’d brought Raj out with me, we’d all be alive.’

  ‘You’re assuming you could have made Raj give up and run. He was a stubborn guy.’

  ‘But I could have…’

  Gracie began to sniff, and Jack gritted his teeth. Situations like these were beyond his social understanding, according to the many people who had made him feel bad over the years. And from a logical perspective, it was difficult to argue with her. If Gracie had been more forceful, maybe it really would have saved Raj’s life.

  But maybe it wouldn’t have.

  It would be so easy, pretending to know what he’d have done in the same situation. But Gracie had been the one inside Oakenfold, not him. And he had spent many years enduring those who had judged him without knowing his background, so he would never judge others in the same way. Gracie would spend the rest of her days wondering about the what-ifs, being judged by other people who definitely would have done this or that in her position. Jack refused to become one of them.

  ‘You did what you needed to do, Gracie,’ he finished. ‘If you’d stayed, you could have both got trapped.’

  Before he could turn to face the street again, Gracie was hugging him. He did not know whether it was a friendship hug or a romantic hug, whatever the latter was. But it lasted longer than most of the hugs he endured.

  Back at Spitfire’s Rise, his friends had spent months joking about the possibility of him and Gracie getting together. The joke had been made so many times that he had wondered whether it was a joke at all. Unfortunately for the crowd, Jack wasn’t attracted to Gracie. He was just the only person her age who made time for her: the one who never called her Lazy Gracie, or underestimated her because of her habit of blending in with the crowd.

  Then again, that probably mattered to her.

  The hug continued, as if she was after something that Jack could not give – and did not even know how to give. Not only did he have zero experience in the field of romance, but he had no motivation either. Jack Hopper felt no attraction to girls. He felt no attraction to boys either. He didn’t feel it for anything.

  There was probably a word for it somewhere, but he had been too afraid to check. Life as a teenage boy without physical attraction was difficult – especially in a world where he was expected to go after the ladies, as if it were his civic duty as a male. His lack of sexuality had been one of the many factors that had led to him heading to his room with a bottle of pills on two different nights. Just one more th
orn in his side, alongside his dead mother and years of relentless bullying…

  Gracie squeezed, and Jack squeezed back. It seemed polite. But inside he was struggling with the morals of the situation: was it OK to let Gracie think there was a chance at all? Would it be better to tell her the truth? Which option would hurt her less in the long run? He may not have felt any attraction to Gracie, but he cared about her. And he didn’t want her to get hurt by something beyond her control.

  A third option appeared in his mind, and he used it without thinking.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmm?’ came a voice from the face buried in his combat uniform.

  ‘It’s getting dark soon. I can get some food for us, if you don’t mind guarding for me.’

  Gracie nodded, and Jack escaped the hug. He took his first steps towards the staircase, but felt the need to do something nice before he left.

  ‘If it makes it easier, you can borrow my rifle while you’re up here. Two automatic weapons are better than one.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve got a loaded handgun,’ he said, surrendering his assault rifle. ‘I’m fine. See you in a bit.’

  Going by Gracie’s reaction, he had not done badly. He doubled-checked his pocket for the handgun before creeping downstairs, and his thoughts drifted to a frightening question: how long could they afford to stay in Lemsford before heading home without Ewan?

  There was a thump somewhere on the ground floor.

  Jack froze, but smiled. Perhaps Ewan had been his usual stealthy self and arrived without them noticing.

  Well, we spent a whole minute hugging with our eyes away from the window. A parade of clowns could have wandered through the front door , as long as they weren’t too noisy .

  All the same, it was better to be careful. The thump could have been nothing, like the half-dozen thumps at Spitfire’s Rise each night. Or it could have been something.

  Jack reached the foot of the stairs, which joined on to the living room. He crept across towards the doorway to the hall and poked his head around. After a long, tense silence, Jack was relieved when he saw a familiar figure walk out from the kitchen. After almost a year living under the same roof, he recognised his companion immediately.

  But…

  What the hell is Alex doing here?

  The clear and obvious figure of Alex Ginelli, tall, black and muscular, edged into the hallway with slow, calculating steps. He peered around with hawk eyes and a bad-tempered expression, his submachine gun held in a way that did not suggest self-defence.

  Jack didn’t know the correct response, but he knew it had to be an instant one. Alex was a friend, but something seemed wrong with him – even without the obvious question of why he had abandoned his post at comms. Unwilling to raise his weapon and uncomfortable with breaking his silence, Jack withdrew his head from the corridor and looked for a place to shelter. He slipped towards the back wall of the living room to duck behind the television. It seemed like a decent place to keep an eye on things.

  Alex stepped into the living room and took a look around. He seemed focused on learning where the entrances and exits were.

  It didn’t seem right. Alex knew this house just as well as Jack: he had been here that same night, and slept upstairs in little Matthew’s bed.

  Then a second Alex Ginelli followed him into the room.

  What the everloving crap in a handbasket…

  The two Alexes walked into the most well-lit part of the living room, and Jack noticed the navy blue shade on their uniform.

  The obvious question entered Jack’s mind, but there was no time to think about how the hell Alex had been cloned. A third Alex entered the living room, a third submachine gun in his hands.

  Jack, sheltered in the dark with his feet tangled in the snake-pit of television wires, would not jump up and shoot. He had given his assault rifle to Gracie out of social awkwardness, and his handgun was semiautomatic: one bullet per trigger pull. One moment of hesitation or one bad shot, and three submachine guns would answer back. He would have to wait until they turned their backs on him.

  The first Alex cast his gaze up the stairs.

  No, no, no. Just assume there’s nobody up there. Nobody has to die for this…

  Alex One, as Jack had subconsciously named him, took his first step onto the staircase. Alex Two started to follow. Gracie would have her gaze pointed out of the front window, and assume any noise to be Jack – who couldn’t afford to call out and draw the clones’ attention—

  ‘Hey,’ came Gracie’s voice from upstairs, loud and joyful, ‘I think that’s Ewan heading up the road!’

  All three Alexes leapt in surprise, with the same shocked expression that the real Alex wore whenever Thomas jump-scared him for fun. The shock faded a moment later, and all three faces turned angry. Their war modes had been activated.

  Alex One accelerated up the stairs.

  ‘Gracie, you numpty…’

  The whisper was loud enough.

  Alex Two turned to investigate the darkness. When he found nothing visible he opened fire indiscriminately, his bullets riddling the walls, the mounted lights, the DVD rack and the television. Jack ignored the strobe light of the muzzle flash, flung himself to the carpet and fired all eight of his handgun bullets. Two of them flew towards the staircase, and pierced Alex One in the shoulder blade and kidney. One of the others hit Alex Three in the chest and sent him dead to the floor. The rest struck nothing but the painting next to Alex Two.

  Alex One toppled to the staircase, alive but in tremendous pain. But even then, there was fury in his twisted facial expression rather than fear. Gracie’s voice sounded from upstairs, asking if Jack was OK. Alex Two looked at his colleagues in surprise, giving Jack enough time to cast his empty handgun to one side, leap to his feet and reach for his hunting knife. He threw it towards Alex Two but it missed pathetically, bounced off the wall and drew the clone’s attention to where he stood. In desperation, he grabbed a glass pot of boiled sweets on the mantelpiece. He charged across the room, his enemy too angered and confused to aim with any accuracy, and raised the glass pot over his head. He brought it crashing into Alex Two’s face, where it shattered upon impact.

  Jack did not feel the sting, nor the warm trickle of his blood as it spilled from his hand. The clone before him was in agony, his eyes closed and his hands picking glass shards from his cheeks. Jack grabbed the clone’s submachine gun in one hand and used the other to deliver his strongest punch to his enemy’s nose.

  Jack realised the hopelessness of his situation. The real Alex Ginelli was twice as strong as Jack Hopper, and the clone versions were no different. They may not have been grown with Alex’s taekwondo skills, but they shared his muscular form. That, and Jack had never seen that kind of ferocity in Alex’s eyes.

  Before Alex Two could steady himself, Jack’s best idea was a head-butt to the face – his helmet cracking into the clone’s forehead – and then throwing the weight of his whole body against the clone until it slammed against the wall.

  To his right, the wounded Alex One batted his hand around the stairs in search of his dropped submachine gun.

  ‘Gracie! Bloody help me!’

  Jack wrapped one arm around Alex Two’s neck, ignoring the punches to every part of him the clone could reach, and tried to seize his weapon with desperate fingers. The angry clone wrestled back with both hands, a struggle Jack would definitely lose. Jack checked for a clear run to his left, forced all of his strength into the arm wrapped around his enemy’s throat, and charged towards the window.

  Alex Two’s forehead shattered the glass, and formed several jagged edges that scoured the face that followed. There were no screams from the clone’s missing vocal cords, but his mouth opened wide and the rest of his body twitched in pain. Before his adrenalin peaked, Jack used his newfound strength to hold the injured clone in place. Alex Two fought with all his power to bring his head back into the living room, but could not sto
p Jack from squeezing his fingers into his collar and carving his neck back and forth against the broken glass.

  The wall beneath the window painted itself red, and the clone’s resistance grew weak. Jack turned just in time to see Alex One’s submachine gun pointed in his direction, before his last enemy was shot dead by a flurry of bullets from Gracie above.

  ‘Are you alright?’ she asked from the top of the stairs.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jack as Alex One toppled down the staircase, ‘peachy, thanks.’

  Jack double-checked each of the three bodies in turn to make sure they were dead, and found that against the odds, he and Gracie really had won.

  ‘And I thought sharing a house with one Alex was difficult,’ he muttered, as he tended to the cuts in his forehead. Head-butting a clone with glass wounds to its face had not been his brightest idea.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Gracie.

  ‘We call comms, describe everything we’ve seen, and tell the real Alex he’s no longer special and unique. After that, we get out of here. Hundreds of thousands of houses between Oakenfold and New London, and this is where they searched.’

  ‘Just our luck,’ said Gracie.

  ‘It’s never luck,’ came a voice at the front door.

  Gracie’s announcement had been right. After two and a half hours of waiting, Ewan had finally found his way to Lemsford.

  ‘You’ve got a theory?’ Jack asked him.

  ‘You’re the logical one,’ Ewan answered, looking across the bodies on the floor. ‘Three clones found their way to this particular house, and all three of them were modelled on someone who’s been there before. What’s the most likely explanation?’

  ‘That they share some of Alex’s memories.’

  Ewan’s eyes stared piercingly into Jack’s, filled with anger.

  ‘So where else do they know the way to?’

  Chapter 11