He’d left his cleverband at Jeeves’.
The fattest of the three men clocked him upside the head with a semi-automatic pistol.
“Ow!” Sam reeled. “Where’d you get that from, a history museum?” He really wished the pills would kick in. Right now.
“You’re under arrest, Sam Numan,” the fat man said. “For terrorist acts against King and country. Take him.”
“Fuck,” said Sam. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He kept saying it as they wrestled his arms behind him and slapped on the cuffs, as they shoved him roughly up against the car and frisked him—finding and confiscating the cigarette case, as they bashed his head against the roof of the car while shoving him into the backseat.
Though he put up only the faintest of fights, he still ended up covered in cuts and bruises. His head throbbed something awful, but through it, a keen warmth washed over him, and the pain began to dull.
At least I won’t have to attend that rally tonight at Tesco, he thought.
They drove on for hours, the fat man in the driver’s seat and a ginger-haired man on the passenger’s side. The third man sat beside Sam with a rifle that smelled of musk and rat dung trained at his head.
“Where are you taking me?” Sam asked, his voice thin. He received no response. The road they were taking was windy and narrow, twisting past a whole lot of nothing—green grass and sheep shit. He started to nod off, forgetting how his arms were uncomfortably wrenched behind him, but every time his eyes closed, the man next to him smacked him in the head with the barrel of his gun.
They drove on in relative silence. Through his downer haze he decided that these were military men, not the local police. They were too clean-shaven, too organised, all seeming to work together on the same rhythm without verbal communication—like bees, ants, attack drones.
His blood vessels constricted as his serotonin soared. Even the rough kicks from the butt of the gun were not a problem; he had to be careful not to smile at the soldier, lazy and uneven. The soldier might fall in love with him, or kill him. Either way, it didn’t matter.
“Some leader,” the soldier beside him muttered. “High as a kite.” He raised his thick eyebrows at Sam’s blown pupils and droopy eyelids, his delayed response to pain. The soldier offered a swift kick to his shin as verification. Sam only smirked.
“S’nice, that. I haven’t been driven around like this in ages. Being a rock star ain’t what it used to be, you know. Limousines and champagne haven’t been a big part of my life since this whole thing started. Any of you boys ever ride in a limo?”
“Can you make him shut up?” the man in the driver’s seat asked.
“I certainly can,” the man beside Sam responded.
Sam felt a tight pinch in his arm. A needle, he realised.
“See what I mean? Cocktails n’ everything,” Saint Fox mumbled as he drifted into oblivion.
Chapter Thirty-One
HOUSE OF CARDS
Twenty-One Dead Under the Age of Twenty in Vauxhall, the headline read.
Jeeves watched the pixels of his cleverband’s holo display dematerialise as he closed the News. Alone in his room he bowed his head low, shedding tears for the fallen. Killing was never necessary. Military men were evil fools in every lifetime. They would never learn.
The war had begun. The old kind of war, the kind Jeeves had seen too many of. The kind he had hoped to avoid, thinking it was possible to do so in this so-called advanced society.
The article was one of hundreds like it mirrored across the country. The King’s army had stormed into Tesco, into Argos, into Asda, holding their employees at 20th century gunpoint. Waterman’s shoot-to-kill order against those who would not comply had at last come through.
Tim Easton, who worked at Asda on Whitechapel Road, had stood behind his checkout counter with shaking hands, beads of sweat rolling down his back.
“I already told you. I don’t know how to disarm it. There’s nothing I can do.”
A soldier in a black beret and camos held a Smith & Wesson gas-powered semi-automatic to Tim’s head.
“Disarm or I shoot,” he’d said, as his large hand closed around the trigger.
A hollow bang sounded out as an example was made of what happened to young men who did not follow orders. Fuel for the fire.
A girl who worked with Tim would tell his mother. The colour would drain from her face. She would break down and sob. When she collected herself, she would offer the girl some tea, which they would drink in silence as the sun set on another rainy afternoon.
Enormous chain stores throughout the country were shutting their doors, unable to comply and unable to guarantee the safety of their employees.
Those who had utilised the Dot, contracted the virus, and subsequently been cured by the GET CLEAN app were much fewer in number than planned. Though the cure appeared to do what it promised, its distribution had gone further underground—appearances of disciples carrying magic code in bracelets on their wrists were increasingly rare given the risk. Waterman’s military forces had finally crawled out of the woodwork in full fledge, armed with weapons of the dead, and were working day and night to infiltrate a location where they could take the cure by force.
And yet, Waterman’s ancient ammunition was not the worst of Janus Jeeves’ problems.
He searched behind furniture, in toilet stalls, underneath girls’ skirts, in men’s trouser pockets.
Sam Numan was nowhere to be found.
Jeeves rattled down into the cellar. Sailor was situated in the top bunk nearest the door, a grim look on his angular face.
“C’mon, Patricia,” Jeeves said. “You’re the last one who saw him. You telling me you have no idea where he is?”
“Wish I did.” Sailor didn’t look up, scrolling back and forth through his cleverband texts as if it would make a new message from Sam appear. “I woke up this morning and he was gone.”
“I’ve got a terrible feeling about this,” said Jeeves, hands laced atop his bobbing head.
“What’s going on?” Benson clambered down the cellar’s steps, holding a coffee mug and rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Our kitty is missing,” Jeeves said, crossing his silky sleeves over his chest.
Jeeves should have known better. Experience had laid the warning signs out for him like a map. Still, what could he do? The kid was a free man, but Jeeves knew he felt anything but. The nation was free, and the prince of the free felt he was trapped. He grimaced then, remembering today’s headline news.
Freedom came at a price.
Jeeves stomped over to a broken chair shoved into the corner of the musty cellar. It was half covered in faux yellow fur, the stuffing popping out of it. He kicked it with the pointed toe of his shiny black boot until its last leg finally collapsed out from underneath it.
“It’s not surprising, being how pissed off he was last night,” Benson said. “Figured as soon as he sobered up, he’d bolt for the door.”
“Then you should have bolted the door, baby,” said Jeeves.
Benson groaned. He sat down on the bunk below Sailor, hiding his face inside his coffee mug.
Sailor sat with his face buried in his hands. “You don’t think they caught him, do you?” he said to his knees.
“Speak up, Paddy, I can’t hear you.” Jeeves pinched the bridge of his nose. His whole body was taut and stretched out like a bowstring, pointed elbows forming the cross of the bow.
Sailor lifted his head. “They got him. I know they did. I can feel it. He’s shaking like a leaf in a cell somewhere, vomiting his guts out and hallucinating.”
“You’re too soft,” Jeeves said, shaking his head. “He’s too soft, too. I should have known.”
“By soft, do you mean queer?” Sailor asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Of course not, baby. Everyone’s queer. S’got nothing to do with how tough you are. Maybe soft isn’t the right word. Young, I should say, rather. Not used to making sacrifices. This is the first war you all have
seen up close. I risked it all on a wee lil’ babe. How old is Foxy?”
“He’s twenty-three,” Sailor said. “Seventeen months older than me.”
“And he don’t remember his past lives. At least, not while he’s awake.”
“What’re you on about?”
“Life and lives, baby. Our Sammy boy hasn’t been through enough of ‘em to remember the ones he’s over and done with—he’s a young soul. Me, I’ve been cycling through this crap long enough that things start to look familiar. I know I’ve been here before and before and before—I got bits and pieces of all my lives up in here.” He pointed to his forehead between his eyebrows. “Foxy’s one of those pieces from sometime, somewhere. He’s a piece I remember, even if he doesn’t. A shiny, sparkly piece. Maybe from the roarin’ twenties.”
“You sound like a shaman I met at Bestival,” Sailor said. He opened his cleverband display and returned to scrolling through recent messages from Sam, most of which were unfit for the eyes of small children. The last message he’d received from him was a photo of what he thought Binky looked like—a mangy, floppy-eared little thing, black and white fur, with big brown eyes and a portly little belly. Sailor had texted him back No, this one:, a photo of a pointy-eared golden boy with short legs and a pushed-in face. Binky’s boyfriend, Sam had replied. Binky can’t get a stud like this, poor sod, read Sailor’s response.
Sailor sniffed, glancing over at Jeeves who had seated himself next to the collapsed yellow chair. His hands were out in front of him, fingers ghosting over imaginary keys, playing a melody in his mind without making a sound.
“Do you even care about him, about any of us?” Sailor asked.
Jeeves dropped his hands to his sides. His eyes roamed back and forth as if he were reading notes on sheet music.
“I care about all of you, as if you were my own children. But of course, you always want better things for your children. Great things. Impossible things. What do we do to our children when we want something for them?” he asked, gazing forward so that his ancient blue and yellow eyes bore directly into young Sailor’s, who slowly blinked at him.
“We push them to succeed?” said Sailor, taking a stab.
“That’s exactly right,” said Jeeves. “We push them.”
Janus Jeeves stared into the neo-impressionist green glass mirror in the corner of his study, propped up amongst the relocated rubble of books and maps, and asked himself for the hundredth time if he might be wrong.
The mirror showed a gloomy black wraith, the fabrics and accessories of Jeeves minus the colour. Long, drab black sleeves, a network of onyx rosary beads, a large hematite cross. Face pale, eyes encircled in black smudges and reddened skin.
Was I a fool? Only a fool would think he could wage a peaceful war, Jeeves said to mirror Jeeves, his hands pressed solemnly together.
This is not the end, his reflection said. The pieces on the chess board await. Your move.
A long, jagged crack made its way down the edge of the mirror. In the dark of night, in the black of day, Janus Jeeves sat and recharged, folding into himself like a cocoon, plugging into an ethereal power source like so many before him. The energy popped and fritzed until it became too much. He unplugged from the source once his power had recharged. The image in the mirror was no longer black. Maybe not as vivid and luminescent as it was at times, but at least there were colours. The blues and yellows of his eyes. A golden blush in his cheeks.
The children will build the future, he said to himself, imagining pawns on a chessboard stacking themselves into a tower. The pawns were white and shining.
They were made to look like marble, but they were made of plastic.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I LOVE ROCK N’ ROLL
Sam’s cot was drenched in sweat, the tiny room ripe with underground warmth and stale air. With nothing else to do, he thought back to the most recent of many nightmares.
Saint Fox, up on stage under bright bright lights—weak in voice and body, unable to keep time with the music. He opened his mouth and sang a beat too soon, he strummed a chord two beats behind. He forgot the lyrics halfway through the song, the rest of the band receding into the background, shrinking into blackness, into nothing. He couldn’t hear them playing anymore except for Zephyr’s kick drum—harsh, steady, and increasingly loud. Alone on stage, a wide spotlight shone down on him from directly above as he sweated bullets and failed to play his own songs that he knew like the beat of his own heart.
Meanwhile, the audience grew and grew, expanding indefinitely. The bigger the sea of faces got, the worse his performance became. The faces in the crowd all looked the same. Twisted, menacing, mouths set in a straight line. Unforgiving. Disappointed.
He lay down on the cold dusty floor of the stage, naked and shivering.
The ringing of a high frequency siren brought him back to the unfortunate present. It reminded him of the squealing series of feedback strains Kit wrought from her guitar at the end of every show, only less sweet. The lump in his throat made him feel like he needed to vomit, only he couldn’t, he tried and wound up merely coughing and gagging over the side of the cot.
How many days had it been since he’d last eaten? How many days had he been locked up in here? Too many, if his stomach was anything to go by. It sat in an angry knot, twisted up like a fist in the center of his abdomen. The dehydration was worse—he ought to drink some water, but any liquid turned to sand in his mouth, any food or drink brought to him by the guards was little better than cardboard and warm piss anyway.
A gust of cold air blew into the room as General Simsworth entered. A man pieced together like he was built out of cement blocks. His fists certainly affirmed that premise.
Sam shut his eyes against the temporary light entering the room. When he opened them again, Simsworth was still there. His face was wide and hairless. No eyebrows even, Sam noticed, whether the result of a genetic defect or overzealous grooming, it certainly wasn’t worth the price of finding out.
Simsworth’s face split into a toothless grin. “How’re we feeling today, Fox?”
“You know damn well how I feel. Or have you not eyes that you can see?” said Sam, for a moment channeling Jeeves and his tendency to misuse biblical quotes.
“You know the way out of this one,” Simsworth sneered. “We’ll give you feckin’ caviar and clotted cream if you tell us what we want to know.” His stout fingers grabbed Sam by the jaw, squeezing hard. The mentioned delicacies made Sam’s stomach reel, more punishment than reward.
“I’ve told you before. I’ve no idea how the technology works,” the words shivered out from between his lips in a thin rasp, barely above a whisper. “I’m just a frontman, yeah? The big brains behind the operation is what you want, and I hope for all our sakes that you pigs never catch up with him.”
That earned him a hard strike across the cheek. It would join other bruises as they bloomed from red to violet to green, fading to yellow before withering away like they were never even there. The layers of skin and muscle beneath, however, would retain a sense memory of fear and abuse.
Simsworth’s too-close together eyes narrowed into angry slits. “You’ve got nothing to lose, isn’t that right, Saint Fox? It’s the only explanation for why you’re so stupid.” Simsworth released him, letting Sam’s head fall back onto the cot with a hollow sound.
Simsworth turned to the guard. “He been eating any of the dreck we’ve been giving him?” he asked.
“Hardly, sir. Going through withdrawal from the smack. Stomach’s all fucked I’d imagine.”
“Good. If he ever does get around to wanting food, too damn bad. We’re gonna stop feeding him. See if he feels like talking when he’s really starving.”
Simsworth exited the room, the metal door clanging shut behind him.
It wasn’t food Sam wanted. The guard was right. He needed oxy, norco, methadone, hell, he’d inject heroin straight into his arm at this point, not caring that it’d fuck him up for good,
not caring that it made him a cliché. He’d even tried to get one of the ‘roid-heads assigned to his watch to slip him some, had tried to bargain with no chips on the table. He’d received only harsh barks of laughter and a few more knocks to the jaw.
On that day and for many days after, Sam Numan wished he’d never become a rock n’ roll star.
It was just a silly dream, after all.
The landlord’s phone calls had gone unanswered. He’d rung up a total of four times in the past three hours, unprecedented for him as he typically ignored his tenants completely, save for when the rent was due. If complaints kept coming in he would have to go down there himself, which would involve putting on trousers, maybe drumming up the lease. He didn’t even know the name of the quiet girl who had moved in only a few weeks prior.
Not so quiet anymore.
Ground level flat 147 was a disaster. Glasses and bottles overturned on the countertops. Scraps of clothing in black and white and red scattered about. Leather and lace, spike-heeled boots, chiffon scarves, the contents of a makeup box containing fifteen different brands of black eyeliner spilling out across a sofa that had been recently slept upon. Half-empty plates and coffee mugs, an impressive collection of depleted beer bottles. An island network of papers with riffs and chords and lyrics scribbled on them, E G A E G A. E B B F A. F U. Nobody listens, so nobody stops us when we take over. You’re lost in the dark, fallen lonely soldier. A variety of sound equipment that few knew how to properly utilise completed the breakdown mosaic—a lifetime collection of wireless pedals littered the floor, each responding with the appropriate screech, scramble, siren, synth, sin and soundbomb when the angry guitar goddess stomped upon them in turn.
Terrible and terrifying noise to most people’s dulled standards, but sweet to her soul. Kit pulled mad, desperate, strangled sounds from the neck of her guitar, feeding it back against her amp stack just to hear its tormented squeal. The dials were turned up as high as they could go for her to still make any sense of the music. She distorted notes until they were ugly, bent strings until they broke.
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 20
