The Queen of Yesterday

by Rob Kinsman

  Regally.

  She pushed that thought away.

  After twenty minutes there was a knock at the door. Skyhawk answered it while Zoe remained out of sight. Their caution was duly rewarded, outside the door was a young member of staff with a chicken sandwich.

  “Room service.”

  “Wrong room,” said Skyhawk.

  The man’s eyes scanned the room.

  “My apologies.”

  Skyhawk pushed the door firmly shut.

  “He knows you’re here.”

  “Maybe he did just get the wrong room.” Zoe felt one of them ought to at least pretend it was a possibility.

  “Our base is compromised. We need to relocate.”

  “How? Where?” said Zoe. Skyhawk was already dismantling his perving apparatus. “We have to wait for Nick.”

  “At best, a village full of heathens looking to burn you will be on their way here right now. At worst, a trained killer with thousands of followers. We need to move to a new safe house.”

  “I don’t have a bloody safe house standing by.”

  “That was… poor planning.”

  “I don’t want to leave. Maja’s here.”

  “She is not important.”

  She’s my friend.

  Zoe picked up the phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not leaving without saying goodbye.”

  “We don’t have the time.”

  Zoe gave him a look so fierce it would make a hungry bear think twice before fucking with her. She dialled the number. Maja answered on the first ring and said she’d come straight up.

  While they waited, Zoe gathered together her depressingly meagre belongings.

  “When the coast is clear we’ll head to waypoint gamma.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Skyhawk pointed at the laminated emergency evacuation guide on the wall. “I told you all this in my earlier briefing.”

  Zoe squinted at the map. “You mean we’re going out the fire exit?”

  “Don’t call it by that name.”

  Ninety seconds later they heard Maja’s trademark rhythmic tapping on the door. They let her in. Maja saw that Zoe’s few belongings had been packed up.

  “You are leaving?”

  “A man came up with a chicken sandwich,” said Skyhawk. “Said he was room service.”

  “No one has called for room service.”

  Skyhawk flashed Zoe a smug look. He began gathering up the bags.

  “I think he was checking if I was here,” said Zoe, sadly.

  “Oh.” Whatever the circumstances, Maja’s smile never seemed to falter. “You will come back?”

  Zoe thought she actually heard her own heart break.

  “I can’t. Not for a while.”

  “We have to go!” squawked Skyhawk. Zoe was learning to filter out the noise which came from his mouth, one of the more useful skills she’d picked up recently.

  “Come with us,” she said, taking Maja’s hand. For a fraction of a second it looked as if her Polish friend was going to agree. Zoe wished she could live in that moment.

  “I cannot.”

  “Please.”

  Zoe was willing to beg if she needed to.

  “I have job here. Is good job. I have to pay rent.”

  And then it hit Zoe.

  Of course she wouldn’t want to come. This isn’t her problem. She’s normal.

  Admittedly normal had taken on a new meaning recently, but the difference was academic. Maja still had a life to lead, one that was full of bills and responsibilities.

  Peering out the window, Skyhawk spied movement on the street below. “We need to move you from this location.”

  “Will you stop talking like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Just… don’t speak at all. Every word you say is irritating.”

  “You will not wait for Nick?” said Maja.

  “We can’t risk it. If you see him, tell him I’ll be in touch.”

  And with that the words were all said, and it was time to leave.

  Sixteen

  Zoe and Skyhawk only got a couple of roads before people started recognising her.

  “Hey, give us your autograph,” called a young man with eBay in his eyes. Zoe pressed ahead without replying.

  “Bet you think you’re so special, bitch,” snarled a woman pushing a pram.

  At the first opportunity, they ducked into Zoe’s fourteenth alleyway of the past few days.

  “Perhaps you should wear the mask again?” suggested Skyhawk.

  They’d originally decided that the disguise would make her even more conspicuous if anyone saw them making off through the fire escape. But, although they seemed to have escaped from any lurking journalists or murderers for now, she was still drawing too much attention.

  “I’ll look like a bank robber,” she protested.

  “Got to be better than being yourself.”

  A depressing comment, not least because it was true.

  “Where am I going to go? Can I stay at yours?”

  Without a nanosecond’s thought, Skyhawk shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ! I just want a sofa to sleep on until I can work out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

  “I can’t allow a security breach like that.” Skyhawk looked sheepishly at the ground before adding, “And my mum’s at home.”

  “You live with your parents?”

  “Lots of people do.”

  “Yes, they’re called children. I thought you said you were older than you look.”

  “How old do I look?”

  “About ten.”

  “Then your initial statement was correct.”

  “Hey, you there,” interrupted an unfamiliar voice. A woman was steaming towards them, dragging a child along behind her.

  “Our location is compromised,” shrieked Skyhawk.

  Zoe ignored him and turned her attention back to the new arrivals. The boy – who Zoe judged to be somewhere between 5 and 13, children not being one of her specialist subjects – looked understandably freaked out by the sight of her.

  “Apologise,” snapped the pushy mother. It took Zoe a moment to realise it wasn’t the child she was talking to. “Tell my son you’re sorry for giving him scary dreams.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  The child looked as unwilling to be dragged into this situation as Zoe was.

  “Why did you do it?” said the mother, almost trembling with suppressed rage.

  “Do what?”

  “Run away. If you hadn’t broken that man’s heart, he wouldn’t be using the dream to frighten my poor boy.”

  Zoe was acutely aware that this wasn’t the first time she was likely to have this conversation. Her voice assumed the quality of someone reading a prepared statement written by their defence lawyer. “It wasn’t me. I don’t know why this is happening. I just happen to look like the woman in the dream.”

  “Are you going back to him?”

  “Like I just said,” Zoe spelt out each word, “you’ve got the wrong person.”

  “Tell my boy it’s going to be alright.”

  The boy stared blankly at Zoe, expecting nothing. It was the mother who seemed on the verge of tears.

  “It will be alright,” lied Zoe, with the kindest smile she could muster.

  “Ok, let’s get you some ice cream.”

  “Thanks, that’d be nice,” said Zoe.

  The mother gave her a filthy look and led her child away. Zoe had often feared her sense of humour might be incompatible with other people. Encounters like this just seemed to prove it.

  “Right, back to business,” said Skyhawk, who had spent the entire exchange silently playing with his phone.

  “Good to know you’ve got my back.”

  “Put the mask on.”

  Accepting defeat, Zoe pulled the rubbery mask over her face again. Her skin imm
ediately started sweating in protest.

  “We should move,” yapped Skyhawk. “She may tell others.”

  “Move where?”

  And then it came to her. There was one place nobody would expect to see her.

  Heading towards the office, progress was slow. The veins of the city were thickly clogged with people coming out to join the crowds amassing under the Waking Dream banners.

  “I should turn my phone on,” said Zoe. “Nick might be trying to call.”

  “No. Absolute radio silence. And you mustn’t engage him alone.”

  “I think I’m old enough to engage whomever I like in whatever manner I choose.”

  “It’s imperative that I am there to monitor the conversation.”

  “I thought you believed his story.”

  “I said it was a possibility.”

  “What’s another possibility?”

  “That he’s a deluded psychopath. In which case you’ll want me there.”

  Zoe’s scanned up and down Skyhawk’s flabby figure.

  “What will you be able to do if he is dangerous?”

  “Call someone for help.”

  Very reassuring.

  They continued walking.

  They travelled for several miles before a thought that had been lurking at the back of Zoe’s mind finally took shape.

  “Why do you want it to stop?” she asked. Skyhawk pretended he hadn’t heard her. Zoe persisted. “You want the dream to end. Why?”

  Skyhawk reddened, uncomfortable.

  “I’m just going to keep asking until…”

  “I used to be special,” he snapped. “People would come to me for answers. Now we’re all the same.”

  This chimed with something Arthur had told Zoe. Their stories were the same: whether through religion or paranoid internet websites, these two men had once been the guardians of special knowledge. Now everyone was experiencing something extraordinary every day, and they’d both lost their purpose.

  Zoe didn’t push Skyhawk into any further answers.

  They waited in a secluded spot opposite Zoe’s office and waited for people to start filing out on their way home. Zoe needed to leave it as late as possible before she made her move, it was important she got inside without being recognised by anyone likely to cause trouble.

  “I’ll see you in the morning then,” said Skyhawk. “We’ll rendezvous here.”

  “You’re not coming in?”

  “I’ve told you before, I won't set foot in that place. It’s where the insane were sent to die. Don’t access your emails, don’t switch on your mobile, don’t tell anyone my real name.”

  “I don’t know your real name.”

  “And don’t contact your contact.”

  “In which case we should probably call him something else.”

  Skyhawk remained stony faced, which was a shame because Zoe was pretty sure this was quality quipping. She did feel faintly suicidal, however, so probably wasn’t in a good place to judge.

  Alf didn’t look surprised to see Zoe, but then again you could drive a herd of cattle through reception and he’d be unlikely to raise a lazy eyebrow. He was clutching his clipboard as if it was alien technology he still wasn’t entirely sure how to operate.

  “Name?”

  Zoe looked to the heavens.

  “Surely you remember me. I’ve worked here for ten years. I spoke to you the other day.” She spied a red-top newspaper on his desk. “There’s a picture of me on the front of your paper for God’s sake.”

  “Oh aye. Name?”

  “Zoe Brook. Still.”

  He peered down at list.

  “You’re not on here.”

  “I must be, I work here.”

  “Not anymore you don’t.”

  It took a bit of persuading but Zoe finally convinced Alf that she needed to talk to Acne Nigel, who always worked late. ‘HR is a vocation, not a job,’ was his mantra, a sentiment not widely shared.

  Alf made Zoe wait in the foyer until Nigel had come down to see her, which was possibly the closest he’d ever come to doing his job properly. Bloody great time to start. Zoe picked a spot to skulk in where she was camouflaged by various oversized pot plants. After a small eternity, Nigel finally appeared.

  “Zoe.”

  “Alf says I don’t work here anymore.”

  “Ah, yes.” Nigel sat beside her with the manner of a doctor about to ask a patient how attached they were to their brain. “In the circumstances it was felt that you should be suspended until we’ve had a chance to fully investigate.”

  “What am I supposed to have done?”

  “You know.”

  “I really don’t.” She really did.

  “Your involvement in recent events has brought unfavourable attention on the department.”

  “This is outrageous, I need to work.” She hoped she’d put up a good enough show before delivering the one question she really wanted to know. “I take it you mean suspended with pay?”

  Alf was tasked with escorting her out the building, but the one thing Zoe knew was that every man had his price. Alf’s turned out to be twenty-three pounds and forty pence, which happened to be exactly how much cash she had on her. In retrospect she should have started lower so she had something left for the chocolate machine.

  He let her slip back in mere moments after throwing her out, and she hid in the toilets until the final few stragglers had gone. She went up to her office. Everything associated with her – computer, desk, chair – had disappeared.

  Very strange.

  She went to have a nose through Julie’s computer. On the side of her monitor was the sure fire indicator of someone who had no sense of humour, a sticker which read: ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps!’. Zoe wondered if Julie knew the building’s history.

  It didn’t take much prying to realise that Julie had flogged all Zoe’s personal effects to terrifying freaks on ‘specialist interest’ websites. It seemed that right now her market value was almost triple that of Rosemary West, an achievement even Zoe’s mother wouldn’t be keen to promote.

  For three surprisingly happy hours Zoe read her colleagues emails, hunted for Julie’s secret supply of biscuits and had a rummage through the darker recesses of people’s drawers. The biscuit situation proved the most perplexing. Julie seemed to ingest them like she was in a surreal version of the movie Speed, where a bomb would go off if her weight fell below 20 stone. Consequently there should be a whole room full of Bourbons somewhere nearby, but Zoe was damned if she could find them.

  On the whole, everything she did find was depressingly normal. It turned out the colleagues she’d loathed for being boring, mundane idiots with no dreams or aspirations were exactly that. None of them turned out to be a secret ninja or engaged in even the most casual of illicit flings.

  What was I doing wasting my life with these people? I could have done anything, been anyone. Back then. Before.

  Disappointed with her findings thus far, Zoe decided to search the final desk. Martin was definitely a quiet soul, and it was common knowledge that they were the ones you had to watch. Her interest was piqued by the fact that his bottom drawer was locked. She couldn’t find a key anywhere but managed to remove the drawer above it so she could peek in. Disappointingly, it only contained a stockpile of healthy breakfast bars.

  “Are you meant to be snooping in there?”

  Zoe instinctively recoiled and put on her best innocent face, about to make an excuse. And then she realised who she was talking to.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  Nick shrugged. “Because I understand how you think.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I’ve known you longer than just the past couple of weeks.”

  “Don’t start that again.”

  There was a slightly manic look in his eye. “It’s true, A
melia.”

  “You’ve got the wrong girl. I’m Zoe.”

  “I went to the hotel. You stood me up.”

  “Someone knew I was there. We had to move,” said Zoe. Nick didn’t look surprised. “Were they something to do with you?”

  “No.”

  Zoe wasn’t sure she believed him, but let it slide for now. “We were trying to get hold of you for the past couple of days,” she said.

  “We?”

  “I had a friend with me.” Strictly speaking this wasn’t true, but ‘friend’ sounded better and more pithy that ‘weird internet geek and serial masturbator who thinks he’s living in an episode of the X-Files’. “He wants to ask you some questions.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “It’s a word, means the opposite of yes.”

  “You don’t know who he is.”

  “I’m not talking to anyone but you.”

  Zoe had had enough of his attitude. It was time for her to call the shots.

  “Well, then we’ve got nothing to say to each other.”

  She folded her arms. Conversation closed.

  Nick shrugged.

  They sat, not speaking to each other, for over an hour. Nick barely moved a muscle, and Zoe remained funereal. To an outsider it would appear that the pair of them were either frozen in time or married.

  “So what will you do?” said Nick, cracking first. “Spend the rest of your life hiding away in this building?”

  Zoe acted like she hadn’t heard him, which she found both childish and satisfying. If this was to be a game of poker faces then she was pleased at this brief victory.

  After a while, wanting to break the stillness, which felt almost as oppressive as the silence, Zoe swivelled a full 360 degrees on Lopsided Peter’s chair. Not entirely coincidentally, this was something she’d always wanted to do. Her own chair had been ergonomically designed for maximum postural advantage, and consequently felt a bit like trying to sit in a dented suitcase. Because of Peter’s ‘condition’, however, he’d been allowed to order whatever he wanted, and so had ended up with something which looked like it had come straight from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.