This Is Our Undoing

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This Is Our Undoing Page 10

by Lorraine Wilson


  The tablets were easily identifiable in the end. A black market heavy dose of the sedative Zolpidem with a low concentration of Phencyclidine as well. A sedative known for its hallucinogenic side effect, and a dissociative hallucinogen. Lina was betting Silene did not know about that second cut-in ingredient. It was no wonder she swung between jittery and sleep, and perhaps no wonder she had reacted with such alarm when Lina had shown them to her. The moral thing to do now was offer her a legal, regulated substitute from the station’s vastly expensive medical supply. And yet how could that conversation possibly go?

  Thiago had said a hint of danger from the forest would drive the Wileys away. This could help. Lina frowned at the remaining tablets in their bag, weighing duty over danger, and went up to lunch still undecided. But Silene was not there, only Xander stretched out along one sofa with music pulsing from his headphones., and Kai curled on the balcony, trailing his fingers over the metal railings. Lina joined him, watching the swifts circumnavigating the house, the light scrabble of their feet as they folded themselves into the eaves.

  ‘They look like knives,’ Kai said.

  Lina smiled. ‘They’re pallid swifts. There used to be swifts in England too.’

  ‘They all died?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lina said. ‘They ran out of places to nest, and food to eat, and too many died migrating until there were none left.’

  ‘They migrate? These ones too?’

  ‘To Africa, yes.’ One fell from its nest just above them, carving an inverse parabola down into the courtyard then out over the meadow, up, and up again.

  ‘My mum migrated to England.’

  He meant his real mother, not Silene. Lina looked at him, trying to gauge origin from his gold-brown eyes and too pale skin. She failed. ‘Really? Where from, do you know?’ Inside the house, Xander looked up at her and then back to his screen. He was doing something, she realised, not simply watching it.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Lina wanted to ask when she had died, or vanished, or had him taken from her. Jericho remembered his mother, but most of his memories were of her dying of the drug resistant TB that held the poor in its claws. He used to flinch when someone coughed; she wondered if he still did.

  ‘Mine came from Spain,’ she said, shocking herself. But Kai just nodded, as if she had said nothing earth-shattering or dangerous. She laughed softly at herself and heard Thiago drop something in his workshop below, the low murmur of a curse in the molten air. She noticed for the first time Silene’s figure on the track where it curved into the trees, walking towards the house, then turning away.

  ‘I want a family,’ the small child at her feet said, eyeing his brother warily. ‘I want them to let me stay, but I think the monster wants them too.’

  Silene turned back towards the house, her head moving as if she was talking to herself, her shoulders tired. Lina touched Kai’s ivory hair but he did not move.

  ‘The monster?’ She had not thought of this, that allowing the locals to frighten Silene and Xander also meant allowing them to frighten Kai.

  ‘It’s angry, I think,’ he said. ‘It’s hungry and angry and sad.’

  ‘Sometimes people are angry and want to scare people,’ Lina said slowly. ‘But that doesn’t mean they would hurt anyone.’

  Kai looked up at her now. Xander did too, again fleetingly, frowning.

  ‘The monster will though,’ Kai said.

  What did you say to that? How could you deny the existence of monsters when he already knew they were real, that they looked like men?

  ‘My brother is coming here tomorrow,’ she said instead.

  Kai frowned. ‘You have a brother?’

  ‘Yes, he’s about your age. Perhaps you can be friends. I think he’d like that.’ She almost said that he was a camp child too, adopted too, but it felt wrong to set them both apart that way. Besides, it would be obvious.

  ‘I’ll find the monster,’ Kai said, not to Lina but to himself now. ‘I’ll stop it from hurting them.’

  Lina had no idea what to say that could possibly make Kai’s strange imaginings more bearable, but Xander’s voice pre-empted her.

  ‘You on a call?’

  Lina looked at the tablet dormant on her lap, then at him. He had pulled himself a little more upright, his own screen’s light reflected in his eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just talking to–’

  ‘Your brother’s name is Jericho Stephenson, right?’

  Lina rose and came into the room, the loss of sunlight like bleeding. ‘Yes,’ she said, sitting, pressing her hands against her thighs. ‘Why? You looked us up?’

  Xander shot her a glance, unable to hold her gaze. ‘Yeah. So what? I wasn’t going to, like, not, was I? ‘Specially as Dev still isn’t here.’

  ‘I see.’ Lina did see, and would have done the same. But someone had knifed her father in a Slovak train station, and the same person or someone else had hunted Jericho across three borders. ‘And what did you find?’ How hard had he looked and just how capable was he?

  He smiled just shy of a snarl. ‘That he’s some camp kid they got out of London without permits and there’s a bounty out on your dad.’

  Lina breathed out, counting the seconds off, breathed in. If she only breathed slowly enough, her heart would slow. ‘I see,’ she said again.

  ‘So why’d they run?’

  Breathe out, pulse slowing, breathe in. ‘Why does anyone run?’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly an idyll, and ESF offered them the chance to get out.’ Temporary permits, but he did not know that.

  ‘So what about the tagging programme here, then? That’s what the locals are fucked off about, right? Your family safer here?’ As if martenitsas and angry villagers could compare to State Investigators, the dogs at the walls, the endless monitoring of money and web activity, opinions and friendships.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe so.’

  ‘The cook’s nephew was killed in Greece,’ Xander said. ‘He was with some terrorist set up from here.’

  Truth or obfuscation. Truth. ‘The Balkanite za Budeshte. Yes. I know.’ She remembered Xander’s age and added softly, ‘He was seventeen. He died freeing a containment camp.’

  Colour climbed Xander’s neck, dotted his cheeks. He looked away from her and she wondered if she had humiliated rather than silenced him. And even if he had already tied the martenitsas to the BB, ought she have mentioned them?

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said eventually. ‘And irrelevant to you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, the colour gone again and his eyes drifting back to his tablet. ‘Maybe.’

  Someone was climbing the stairs, but he said in a rush, ‘She’s not normally like this, y’know? That’s why–’

  But Iva was here and the ghost of her nephew was present in the room like a whisper, and Xander fell silent.

  Although Silene had vanished from the track, she did not come up for lunch and Kai came to the table but ate nothing, instead trailing his fingertips along the edges of the knives. Once or twice he reached out to touch Xander’s arm but so lightly that his brother did not notice, or appeared not to, bent over his food with his tablet propped in front of him and his headphones thrumming. Thiago met Lina’s eyes across the table and raised his brows fractionally.

  Anais put the radio on, a local station that crackled and hissed, interspersing jagged music with a man talking in a breathless rush. Not a State broadcast, but Silene wasn’t here, Xander couldn’t hear, and Kai... Kai had folded his arms on the table and laid his chin on top, amber eyes on the window and the forests beyond. Abstracted and yet also intent, and Lina shivered.

  ‘Xander,’ Thiago said, nudging his plate to one side and waking his tablet. ‘Xander,’ louder. The boy looked up, frowning, pushed his headphones down around his neck. Thiago turned his screen so that both Lina and Xander could see. ‘This y
our missing man?’

  It was a camera-trap photo of a tall man carrying a military pack. He had tilted his head up as if listening and the sun on his cheekbones had made the dark skin bronze.

  ‘Yes!’ Xander leaned forward. ‘Fuck, yes. Where is that? When–’ already zooming into the time stamp without asking. ‘Seven forty-two this morning, what does that mean?’ Pointing at the camera ID, ‘Where is it?’

  She had known he wanted Devendra Kapoor here, and known both he and Silene felt vulnerable without him. But the blinding relief on Xander’s face still surprised her. She leaned forward as well. ‘That’s near Dupnica, isn’t it?’

  Thiago nodded. ‘It’s the ESF border cam. He is tagged, it seems.’ So ESF HQ would have been alerted – a military tag crossing into their territory.

  Xander already had a map up on his tablet, but it was barely helpful. Dupnica was marked, but the ESF zone was a great green blank. ‘Why’d he come that way, and why’s he on foot for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘He must have had to go west around the wildfires.’ Lina was studying the camera image again. Then clicked through to a couple more, picking him up as he walked east towards them, noting the times and the speed he was moving. Devendra Kapoor looked capable and wealthy and yes, she could see how he might be someone you depended on. But also, if you had things to hide, he looked like someone who would find them.

  ‘Where is he now?’ Xander said.

  Thiago lifted a shoulder. ‘Not here yet.’

  ‘But where’s his tag?’

  Lina clicked back to that first camera image, the upturned face. Iva and Anais, who had both been listening silently, began murmuring together in quiet Bulgarian.

  ‘We don’t track military tags unless there’s a need.’ Thiago caught Lina’s sideways look but remained expressionless.

  ‘When’ll he get here?’ Xander was leaning forward, tense and solid.

  Thiago shrugged. ‘That depends.’

  ‘What?’

  Lina sighed and answered. ‘It’s only about thirty kilometres as the crow flies, but it’s hilly, and rough going.; and he won’t have an accurate map.’ ESF locked out satellite imagery over their territories and did not release maps. The only people meant to be on ESF land were those who belonged to ESF, one way or another. If only that were still true.

  ‘I could send him a proper map.’

  ‘No,’ Thiago said without looking up, but finally relented a fraction. ‘He’ll be fine. He’s more than capable.’

  And there was no way Xander could argue that, because he clearly believed it. He sat back, pulling up headphones sullenly, staring ferociously at the map on his screen. His frown was deepening, the arc of his shoulders rising as if pressure were building within him, so Lina knew what he was about to do before he did it. Turning the screen so no-one else could see it, he began typing furiously, his large fingers graceful in a way the rest of him had not mastered.

  Lina looked at Thiago, but he seemed unaware. ‘Xander,’ she said carefully. ‘Xander.’ He glanced up but didn’t remove his headphones, so she said simply, ‘Don’t.’

  His face all was mute refusal and challenge. So ESF caught him sneaking into their systems, what could they do to him, a State son of a murdered State politico that they themselves had invited in?

  Lina gave in. He was probably right, and besides, if he was chasing Devendra then he was not probing into her family. Kai rose to his feet as she did and drifted down the stairs while she was helping Iva with the last of the dishes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lina waited beneath the white arches of the church, watching old women in black and men with their tattered shirts. There were few children, because faith was difficult for the youth to cling to when no god could justify what the world had become and perhaps only the old still believed in permanence. Perhaps they came seeking forgiveness for their inaction, their complacency.

  Jericho would stand out here amongst the gathering figures with their tannin-tinted skin, but still she checked every small face, her heart leaping each time a child wove into sight. No, she kept thinking. Not them, and not them. And, please. Please.

  Then a woman moving slantwise towards the church steps so that they would meet as if perchance. Her eyes met Lina’s and every muscle in Lina’s body flexed with the urge to leap forward. Jericho, she thought, Jericho, Jericho. She couldn’t see him yet because the bells were ringing now and the crowd’s tide rose. She couldn’t see him, and daren’t move, and then there he was and her heart was a fire.

  His hair had been released from its cornrows and pulled into a bunch on the top of his head. He was wearing a t-shirt with a purple unicorn in threadbare sequins, holding the woman’s hand. Only when they were two paces apart did he look up, his eyes holes in the universe and Lina was on her knees without knowing how she got there, her arms reaching for him, and yes, she barely knew this child, and yes, he barely knew her. But she loved him, she loved him and they were both lost without the man who loved them both.

  ‘There’s news from London,’ the woman who must be Daria said. Lina look up at her. She was perhaps sixty, older maybe, and could have been anyone. Mother, grandmother, teacher, nurse, all those assumedly female roles that reduced wondrousness to the mundane. Perhaps she was all of those things, but she was also this, here.

  ‘What is it?’ Lina said. Jericho was motionless within her arms, his head bent but barely touching her shoulder. ‘What news?’

  Daria looked down at her with the sun haloing the fraying edges of her jumper. ‘The man linked to you. He is dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Some small star was collapsing in on itself in her chest. ‘Oh no.’

  She heard Daria make a soft sound that was both sympathy and brusqueness, a reminder of where they were and who they were. Lina pulled herself to standing, her hands against Jericho’s shoulder blades, her eyes on Daria’s seamed face with the entire world just that little bit more broken.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You should go. Thank you. Safe return home.’

  James, she thought. She had imagined herself prepared for this. James.

  Daria slung a bag off her shoulder that Lina had not even noticed, laid it at Jericho’s feet, handed Lina a fold of papers and touched her arm. ‘Safe return home,’ she said and turned away, slipping into the church like a latecomer, anonymising herself in the crowd.

  Lina unfolded the papers, Jericho’s ID and travel permits. Someone had altered the ESF permit to match Jericho’s false ID name. Genni Mathews. It was surprisingly easy to make anyone into another gender, but especially so with children. ‘Jericho,’ she said gently. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘They hurt Dad,’ he said, and she brushed a hand over his cheek, the dense bound hair. Come back, she told her heart. Come back to me.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I spoke to him and he’s okay. He’ll be here soon and we can look after each other till then, can’t we?’ He looked up at her and with the sun catching him fully, she could see how grey his skin was, shadows gathered damson beneath his eyes. ‘My truck is just around the corner,’ she said. ‘You’re nearly there.’

  She thought he might fall asleep in the car, hoped he would so that she could be alone with this raw heartache for a while, but the taut, endless tension had not yet left him because although he leaned his head against the window, his eyes were open. He watched the village fall away and the forest swarm in, a tideline of roses along the road, fractured ruins visible here and there like watchtowers or ghosts. At the ESF barrier, he let her press his fingertip to the print reader after her. The gate flashed green and parted to let them in.

  ‘Are you okay, sweetie?’ she said as the truck turned into the first snake-spine bend.

  He did not answer, his face averted.

  ‘Jericho?’

  They passed into shade and out again before he answered
.

  ‘Genni.’

  Lina frowned a little, changed down a gear. ‘You can go back to Jericho now, love. That was just for the journey.’

  He made a strange, awkward movement, shot her a glance she did not catch and looked away again.

  ‘You’re safe now,’ she said. She would make it so. But he still did not speak, his thin brown fingers fiddling with the hem of the t-shirt, sequins catching the light. It might, she thought, be the fear of the hunted, the need to hold tight to a safer self. Or it might not; it didn’t really matter right now.

  ‘You want to stay Genni?’

  One shoulder lifted, his face averted.

  ‘You want to be a girl?’ Look at me, she thought. The truck slowed as she waited, wrestling with understanding. He, she, turned and met Lina’s eyes fleetingly.

  ‘Yeah.’ A little defiantly, a little uncertainly.

  Another bend and she had to look away. The truck roared and protested. She wanted to ask more, to know whether this was new, whether their father knew, whether this was fear or a hidden truth, but after a moment, she only said, ‘Okay. Genni, then.’ And reached out to take her sister’s hand in hers for a moment. It flexed around her own briefly before pulling away and Lina wished desperately that their father was here for this.

  When a snake wound across the road ahead of them, Lina stopped the truck so that Genni could see. But she barely looked, her eyes like burnt-out coals, so Lina waited for the snake to pass and drove on, all her memories of a good man and all the words she wanted to say battering like moths in her head.

  ‘Your room is next to mine,’ she said, laying Genni’s paltry bag down and pulling the curtains against the heated sunlight. They were upstairs above the lab in the old house where she and Thiago lived. There was a larger empty room in the new house, of course, but Lina had to hope that her proximity would be some comfort for now. ‘Or if you want, we can put a bed up in my room so we’re together?’

 

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