by Damien Love
He tossed the machine aside and stood waiting, looking up. Solid silence radiated down on him. Clouds moved slowly high above. Then the silhouette of a man’s head appeared in the well’s opening. Not his grandfather, he knew instantly.
“Eh . . . hello?”
No response.
“Hello?” Alex tried again. “Can you help?”
Still no answer. The figure disappeared.
“Wait! Don’t—” Alex stopped as he saw the rope ladder flung over the well. It lowered until it hung just before him. He glanced around. The broken stinger robot lay lifeless amid the dingy leaves. Staying down here was not an option, whatever waited above. He pulled on his coat, tested the bottom rung, and began climbing. As he reached the top, his arms shook, and not just from the exertion. He drew a breath, then gingerly raised his head above the wall.
A thickset man who looked to be in his late seventies or early eighties stood by the well, making sure the ladder was secure. The man chewed his lip uncertainly, watching Alex.
“’Allo,” he finally said, then paused, wincing in doubt. “It’s, uh . . . Alex, innit?”
Alex stared at him. He couldn’t remember how to speak. Finally, he found one word.
“Harry?”
XXI.
FLIGHT
They stared at each other. Then Alex hurled himself from the well and flung his arms around Harry. One big arm wrapped around him, squeezing back. Alex wiped his eyes as he stepped away.
“Harry! You’re—” He broke off as new apprehension washed through him. He had been going to say something like, You’re safe, you’re all right. But now it hit him. He didn’t know what Harry was.
“Uh,” Alex tried again. Waves of fear pounded at him. “Harry. Are you . . . all right?”
“Eh.” Harry looked to the sky, then furrowed his brow. “Eh, yeah. Think so. I mean, I’m kind of . . . foggy-feelin’. But it’s beginnin’ to clear a bit. I just can’t remember ’ow . . . I found myself in gloomy woods, but I can’t remember ’ow I got there. I was just walkin’, tryin’ to think, listenin’ to the birds. Somethin’ made me come in this direction. Then I heard voices and saw . . . wassername, the girl.”
He broke off, frowning after a memory. His eyes widened. “Zia! Gawd. Yeah. I ’id in the trees watchin’. There were, eh, whatsits, little flyin’ blighters . . . fliers sittin’ around, but she was too busy lookin’ down the well at you, I guess. They were dozin’. I managed to grab a couple and smash ’em before she knew I was there. Stunned ’er for a moment. I thought I’d be in for it then, but when she saw me—well, it was weird. She just kind of froze, starin’ at me. Like she was . . . scared of me, just for a second. So I took the opportunity to smash another couple of her machines. She went stumblin’ away, then she got ’it by another bigger shock and ran.”
Harry gestured at a few badly damaged fliers lying around the ground, then pointed out the direction Zia had taken, into the trees behind Alex. “I reckon we shouldn’t ’ang around too long, though.”
“Harry . . .” Alex paused, picking his way carefully. He held himself tense, ready to run. “You don’t remember anything before you found yourself in the forest?”
“Well, yeah,” Harry mused. “I mean, I can remember most things. I just can’t remember what ’appened . . . just before. Do you know?”
“You, uh. There was an accident. With your car,” Alex said tentatively. He stole a glance at Harry’s clothes, looking for signs of his recent burial. They seemed immaculately clean.
“Oh yeah.” Harry stood scratching his cheek. “That rings a bell, right enough. Must’ve banged me ’ead . . . Lessee, I was . . . up on the Kandel. And—” He stiffened, snapping into slightly sharper focus. “’Ere, where’s your grandfather, Alex? There’s things I need to tell ’im. If I can remember what they are.”
“We have to find him,” Alex said, glad to change the subject. “He crashed. Over . . .” He trailed off as he looked around, lost. He cast another anxious look at the big man and decided he was glad he was there. Harry seemed like Harry, after all. Leaving aside that he had returned from the grave, there was nothing different about him as far as Alex could tell. So far, anyway. He made a quick bargain with the part of his mind that was screaming: they could get together and freak out about it later. There were more important things to do now.
“But what do we do now?” Alex said, speaking more to himself than Harry.
Harry shrugged, then started patting his pockets. “I’ve lost me phone,” he muttered. “Mind you, wouldn’t be much use for tryin’ to get ’old of your grandad, anyway. Just cannot persuade ’im to carry one. I mean, ’e’s fanatical about it. Those things mark the end of civilization was ’is exact quote last time I tried.”
Alex wandered to the felled tree where Zia had dumped his possessions and lifted his own pulverized phone. Smashed beyond repair. Prying it open, he managed to pull the SIM card free from inside. It looked okay. He pocketed it along with the other items, then stood massaging the tension knotting his neck.
His eyes drifted until they stuck on a small gray shape nearby. Another dead flier. But this one had a purple-and-black ribbon tied around it. The machine he had briefly controlled. The sense-memory of operating it—of being it—hit him. He had done that. Just like them. With his interestingly shaped mind.
He crossed over and picked it up. It seemed undamaged. He pushed the panel open. His hair was still in there.
“Alex, what’re you doing?” Harry’s concerned voice came from behind him. “Careful with that.”
“It’s all right, Harry,” Alex said, trying to convince himself. Some deep instinct compelled him to remove Zia’s ribbon from the machine. Searching the ground, he found a pebble and stuck the strip of cloth under it, before stamping the stone down into the soft earth.
He studied the flier. It couldn’t hurt to try again. Could it? He had to try to find out where they were, and then how to find his grandfather. It probably wouldn’t work, anyway. He hefted the machine and closed his eyes and sought to remember how to build the bridge.
“Alex?”
He sensed Harry’s anxiousness. He put that into the mix, along with his own simmering fears. Before long, he heard the little thrum and whirr.
“Alex!”
He ignored Harry’s alarmed cry. Ignored everything. It was getting easier. He felt the robot rise, him rising with it. Green-gray-brown flared in his mind: glimpses of trees, a momentary sight of himself standing there, eyes closed, Harry behind him, staring in dismay.
Up, he thought. He tried to send up across the bridge. The flier responded, climbed higher. Alex tilted his head, and the flier banked, as he knew it would. The landscape spread below like a map. He saw himself down there with Harry beside the black spot of the well. He circled. No sign of Zia. He moved off, fast now, flying over the ruined farmhouse, a huge brown field, the woods.
His flickering vision was vague one moment, sharp the next. Beyond the trees stretched another rutted field. He flew higher, scanning the landscape. There, the hills rising, the Kandel itself. Not far. He turned in the air, trying to orient himself.
The field below was bordered by a thin footpath and then a long green meadow. Beyond that, a pale road. Alex raced toward it and swept lower, searching. There. A break in a hedge. And there. Tracks. A wrecked car. No sign of life, he thought, then stopped thinking it as the cold weight of that thought caused him to stall and waver dangerously in the air. He righted himself and mapped it out. If they walked in a straight diagonal, they should get to the car before too long.
He climbed again, partly trying to fix the location in his mind, but partly just luxuriating in his sense of flight, soaring and looping above the treetops. Something else caught his attention. Something moving farther along the road, away from the wreck: a gray figure.
With a surge of delight, Alex tore through t
he air to catch his grandfather. He appeared fine but tired. The old man must have heard him, because he turned. Alex swooped in and raised an arm to wave. The old man lifted his cane in reply, then, just as they were about embrace, dropped his Gladstone, leapt up and thwacked Alex square across the face.
Alex’s mind flashed deep, stinging black. He was sent spinning backward, blind, out of control. He crashed, reeling from shock and pain. Opening his watering eyes, he was bewildered to find himself kneeling at Harry’s feet. His brain was vibrating in his skull. He’d lost all contact with the flier. Harry grabbed his shoulders.
“Alex! You all right?”
“Uh, yeah. I saw my grandad, Harry. He’s okay. But I, uh. I forgot I wasn’t me. Hang on.”
He didn’t know if he could find the flier again. It was too far. The bridge he’d need to build was too long. He put that fear and worry into the effort, and, after a while, there it was, still the same bridge, still there. But he could see nothing but black.
Look, he thought, and sent look across.
Images came, faint, then clearer. Black spikes towered above him, jagged against the sky. Not black, green. He was lying on his back in long grass. Movement. His grandfather’s head appeared above the grass, not far away, moving stealthily, a giant hunting him, cane held ready to pulverize him. Alex sent an urgent up across. The old man swiped as he took flight, but he was already too high.
Alex called the flier back, reeling it in until the thing sat in his palm, wings shivering, amber eyes warm. Head dented.
“Alex, what did you do?” Harry said anxiously. “I don’t think you should—”
“We need to get a message to Grandad,” Alex said, suddenly aware he was breathing heavily. This had taken more out of him than he’d realized. “He’s going the wrong way. Have you got a pen?”
Harry shook his head, frowning gravely. Alex thought hard. He slipped Harry’s watch from his wrist.
“Is it okay if I use this?”
“’Ow’d you get that?” Harry pulled back his sleeve and stared in surprise at his empty wrist. “Your grandad been teachin’ you pick-pocketin’? But, yeah, go on. Whatever you’re doin’.”
Alex double-checked the strap was fastened, then hung it over the flier’s upraised scalpel-arm and sent the thing flying again. He slowed when he spotted his grandfather, heading determinedly along the road. The old man halted and lifted his stick as Alex descended, then paused, hovering at eye-level ten feet in front of him. His grandfather glanced around, turned back, regarding him cagily.
As slowly as he could, Alex lowered himself almost to the ground and let Harry’s watch slide gently to the pavement. He bobbed back up and retreated another ten feet.
The effort of controlling the flier was really beginning to tire him. He could feel every beat of a wing, every inch of the distance between himself and his machine. Hovering motionless like this took it out of him more than anything else.
The old man scowled, then lowered his stick and stood leaning on it, regarding the scene. Eventually, he came cautiously forward. A few steps from the watch, he dropped to a crouch and reached out, poking it warily with the cane. Finally, with care, he fished it up and pulled it to him. He straightened, examining the watch, pulled at his bottom lip, then cast another searching glance Alex’s way.
Alex turned slowly in the air, seeking inspiration. Nearby, the scraggy hedge ran along the field. He buzzed quickly over to it, scanning the ground, until he found a slender broken twig, almost a foot long. After a few efforts, he managed to work his clumsy hook into it and carried it back.
His grandfather stood watching. Alex approached gingerly until he was within five feet, then shook the twig free so it fell to the road. The old man pushed back his hat, baffled. Alex hunted for another twig much the same and dropped it on top of the first, then repeated the operation with a third, smaller, twig.
After making sure his grandfather wasn’t going to smash him to pieces, he hovered low, pushing and pulling the twigs on the road with his scalpel until they formed an A. He retreated several feet. His grandfather stared at him. Alex bobbed forward slowly, trying to nod at the A. The old man rubbed his chin.
After a few seconds, Alex moved in again. He hooked up the smaller twig and pulled it away, then rearranged the remaining two: X.
His grandfather stared at it dubiously, then gave Alex a long, pensive look. The old man moved to the side of the road by the spot Alex had marked, dropped his Gladstone, and, with a curt nod, sat on the bag, waiting.
The strain of using the machine was getting unbearable. Alex called the flier back as fast as he could, limbs raw from flight. He had to let it drop when he was still a little distance away from himself and Harry. The abrupt feeling of hitting the ground jolted harshly through his body. He pulled his aching mind away from the robot, and hugged himself, kneading his stiff shoulders.
“Alex, what did you do?” Harry repeated sadly.
Alex stood panting. Thinking about what he had done unsettled him. Yet using the flier had been easy. And it had got him what they needed. After a moment more of indecision, he walked over and picked it up, tucking it away in his coat.
“C’mon Harry. It’s this way.”
The boy and the dead man set off across the fields.
XXII.
REUNION
They marched through the morning rain. Alex cast nervous looks behind and equally nervous looks at his companion. Harry seemed lost in trying to piece memories together.
“S’funny,” he said. “Like, I remember clear as a bell what I ’ad for dinner last Tuesday: pie ’n’ mash night. But the past few days, it’s all muddled, bits missing. Still, I’m sure your grandad’ll fill in the blanks.”
“Uh, yeah.” Alex nodded. The ache had faded from his head and limbs, but he remained shaken. As his mind cleared, he tried replaying what Zia had said, about his grandfather and secrets. Bet ol’ Grandad never told . . . Daddy died, hmm? She was trying to mess with him. He resolved to ignore it and concentrate on getting to his grandfather. At least it was a problem he could understand.
Eventually, he saw horses ahead in the field they were walking through. The big animals came wandering softly over. One nodded to them as they passed. Alex began to feel a faint prickling running through him.
“’Orse goes into a bar,” Harry said. “Barman says, ‘Why the long face?’ One of me favorites, that. That and the one about the ’ippopotomus.”
Not far beyond sat the battered Citroën, ripped roof hanging out like a ragged black sail. The tingling in Alex’s blood tightened.
“Blimey.” Harry gave a low whistle. “What a mess. Wait.” He squinted at the wreck. “I’m remembering bits. Yeah. I crashed, like you said. Life-sizer in the road. Then I ran. Into the trees. Then . . .” He grimaced. “Nah. Nothin’.”
Alex only half listened. The feeling singing through him sharpened again as he hurried toward the car. He leaned in, searching the footwell. His hand found the old toy robot, stuck beneath the seat. Relief flooded him, along with something else: a sense like being whole again. Now all he needed to do was find his grandfather.
Heading along the road, Alex grew increasingly puzzled. He was certain they had come the right way, but there was no sign of the old man. He stopped when he reached a spot where two twigs formed an X. Two stubbed-out cigarettes lay nearby.
“Hands up.” His grandfather’s voice came out of nowhere.
“Grandad?”
“Hands. I don’t like guns, so don’t make me have to use this one.”
Alex and Harry raised their hands. Alex’s grandfather’s head lifted warily above the hedge farther along the road. His eyes glittered coldly as he studied them. He flicked a quick, unreadable glance at Harry, then turned his steely gaze on Alex.
“Over here. Slowly.”
Alex did as he was told.
“Grandad—”
“What was the name of the film I sent you for your birthday?”
“What? Uh . . .” Alex struggled to remember. Something old, black and white. “Night of the Hunter.”
“And what did you make of it?”
“Not much. It was a bit silly.”
“Hmm.” His grandfather squinted at him. “Sounds like you, anyway. Come closer, hold out your hand.”
Alex did it. His grandfather lifted the last of his salt sachets in one hand, ripped it open with his teeth, then reached quickly over the hedge to sprinkle grains onto Alex’s palm. The old man watched Alex’s face carefully while nothing happened.
“Lisssen,” Harry said. “Can I put me bloomin’ ’ands down?”
Moving as though he suddenly couldn’t contain himself any longer, Alex’s grandfather grinned wildly, ducked out of sight, and burst through a hole low in the hedge. He carried no gun, only his cane, bag, and Alex’s rucksack, all of which he dropped to clutch Alex by the head. He stared into his eyes with a serious, searching look, then wrapped him in a hug.
“Grandad, are you okay?” Alex asked, rubbing salt from his hand.
“Fighting fit,” Alex’s grandfather replied. He let Alex go then spun to embrace Harry. “Question is: how’s this chap? Unbelievable! Harry! Let me look at you.” The old man stepped away, gazing in wonder. “My word, man! Harry . . . how are you?”
“Yeah, fine,” Harry said, embarrassed by the attention. “Just a bang on the ’ead. Little woozy.”
“Harry can’t remember much after his crash,” Alex said pointedly. “He came to in the woods.”
“Just amazing,” Alex’s grandfather said. “Ah, now, Harry. I need a quick private chat with Alex. Something his mother wanted me to check. Teenager stuff, you know.”
“Sure thing,” Harry said.
“I thought you said you couldn’t do it,” the old man murmured as he drew Alex aside.
