Taking the picture from a drawer, he unrolled it and carefully fixed it beneath the piece of glass he had liberated from an old, badly faded reproduction of Constable’s Haywain. Standing back, he appraised the result.
The drawing he’d made of Kate wouldn’t win any awards, that was for sure. It was a rudimentary affair, just a few lines in heavy charcoal. But something about it—a calm stillness, perhaps—captured the essence of the woman with whom he’d gradually fallen in love. Mee and Joni had both agreed instantly when they’d seen it.
“That’s Kate,” Mee had said, smiling.
“I didn’t know you could draw,” Joni had added. “You have hidden talents, Uncle John.”
“I bet he does. Just ask Kate.”
“Mum!”
The fact that John’s feelings for Kate had turned out to be reciprocated had been a huge surprise to him, but, apparently, not to anyone else. He just couldn’t fathom why she had come to him that first night and climbed quietly into his bed. It had been the most surprising thing to happen to John since Seb had removed his cancerous brain tumor and allowed him to be reborn from the rotten corpse of Mason’s poisonous personality.
Now, as he looked at the picture in the winter sunshine streaming through the window, he hoped it was a gift worthy of the wise, beautiful, sensual Kate. He wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string and propped it against the workbench. It was Kate’s birthday in three days. He shook his head slowly in wonderment at his own childlike happiness, which had arrived now, in his sixties. He felt sure no man alive appreciated the ever-shifting, lurching ground folk walk while falling in love as much as he did. To have his view of life shifted dramatically when everything might have been calcifying with age, was a blessing he intended to enjoy.
He looked at his watch. 9:30am. Kate would be writing. She was working on a document explaining the Innisfarne community to members of the Order, more and more of whom were finding their way to the island, often confused, scared or in shock by the loss of Manna to future generations since Year Zero. Innisfarne offered, to some, a way of facing this new reality without reliance on religion, magic, or nanotechnology.
John figured a cup of coffee might be a welcome interruption. He filled a mug and walked out of the door of the workshop, walking briskly toward the main building. He was smiling when he rounded the corner and walked straight into Sian, the coffee flying out of his hand and heading toward her face.
The young woman’s reactions were incredible. As the hot coffee arced toward her, she moved forward and ducked to one side, swiping the mug with the back of her hand as it fell, sending it flying. It sailed clear across the yard and smashed a couple of feet away from McGee, who bleated in shock before he recovered his wits and—as was his custom—tried to eat the resulting mess.
“I’m so sorry, Sian,” said John, instinctively placing a hand on her shoulder as she turned away from him. She was adjusting her sunglasses, using both hands to maneuver them back into position on her face. At his touch, her body tensed, then she scuttled away from him as if terrified by his proximity. John let his hand drop and took a step back himself, remembering how she reacted to men. As he looked at her, she seemed to shrink, moving away from him, her shoulders hunched, her head down, her body beginning to shake.
He started to apologize again, but Sian shook her head and turned on her heel, half-running, heading toward the larger dining room. It needed a fresh coat of paint, and Sian had made a start, making it clear she would rather work alone. Joni had managed to spend a little time with her, bringing her drinks and snacks, but John wondered if the woman would ever truly open up and begin to relax around others. Whatever she’d been through, it must have been truly horrific.
He picked up the pieces of broken mug, retrieving the handle from McGee’s mouth, which provoked an outraged bleat from the omnivorous animal.
Five minutes later, he took a fresh mug of coffee over to Kate, who was struggling to write a chapter on her feelings about Year Zero.
“I know it seems crazy to feel glad about it,” she said, “but Manna wasn’t what kept me in the Order. It drew me there in the first place, trying to discover how to use this scary ability I’d found. That’s how most people start out, I guess. But it was what lay beneath that kept me there. What I found in meditation.”
John rubbed her shoulders, and she leaned back into him, cradling the warm mug in her hands.
“I may not be a typical case,” he said, “but I’d take meditation over Manna any day of the week. Although,” he lowered his hands from Kate ’s shoulders to her breasts and kissed the nape of her neck, “lately I’ve discovered certain other abilities are present in one particular leader of the Order.”
Kate shuddered as John continued to place tiny kisses on her neck. He knew it drove her crazy. When she finally pulled away, she was laughing.
“You’re worse than a teenager,” she said, taking his hands from her breasts and kissing his rough knuckles.
“I still have a great deal of catching up to do,” said John. “And you’re working too hard. You want my opinion, an hour’s break would do you good. Like a power nap. Just, er, without the nap, I guess.”
Kate gave him a long look, as if she was taking some time to consider his proposal. Finally, she stood up and stretched, arching her back as she raised her arms over her head.
“Thirty minutes,” she said, smiling. “And don’t worry, we’ll make every minute count.”
John watched her body move as she reached up toward the ceiling, wondering at her dancer-like economy of movement. The woman does everything with style. She can probably even cut a fart gracefully.
As Kate reached out her long, dark fingers to take his hands, John suddenly froze. Kate stared at him as he looked right through her.
Everyone moves a certain way. We stop noticing it.
“John?” said Kate. “John? What is it?”
When I spilled that coffee, she moved toward me. Not away from me.
“John, talk to me. You’re scaring me. Are you ok?”
She wasn’t scared of me at all. She moved forward under the mug. She swatted it out of mid-air like a basketball pro. Lightning fast, calculated. Then she went back into character and backed away from me. She pushed her sunglasses back on. There was something weird about that, too.
“John, please.”
He refocused and looked at Kate.
“Sia—,” he began, then stopped. He forced a smile. “Just something I have to check,” he said. “It’s probably nothing.” He looked at her face and saw the need for more reassurance than he was giving. The last thing he wanted was Kate following him if there was a problem.
“Seriously,” he said, forcing a laugh, “it’s just something I’ve left in the workshop. I need to take it out of the vice before it warps. I’ll see you later.”
He walked quickly away, leaving Kate looking confused. She was far too perceptive for him to risk elaborating on his lie and being found out.
He smiled at her as he reached the door. He didn’t start jogging until he was sure he was out of Kate’s earshot.
47
Northumbria
Cyril Perkins had been driving buses for forty-one years. Nearly thirty of those years had been on the same roads - the long coastal route between Bamburgh and Berwick, stopping at almost every village on the way. Locals had campaigned successfully to keep this particular bus going long after it had stopped being profitable, buying out the company which ran the service, and repackaging it as a tourist attraction. These days, there were as many foreigners as locals on the bus, cameras out as Cyril negotiated the winding lanes that hugged the Northumberland coastline.
The bus itself was somewhat of a relic, one of only a handful of non-electric vehicles permitted to use the road. It was a piece of history, the last diesel bus in the northeast. Americans, in particular, loved to film the polluting cloud of black smoke that puffed out of the exhaust when Cyril started her up. They often grabbe
d seats at the front, so they could gawp at him as he used the manual gears to push the bus up to forty, or, occasionally—and only downhill—even forty-five miles per hour.
Cyril knew he was as much an antique as the bus and, one of these days, when one or the other of them ran out of puff, that would be the end of it. A shiny, efficient bus would take over, with a shiny, efficient driver. Still, he hoped to get a few more years out of the old girl before that happened. And he was in excellent health for a man nearing his mid-seventies. A little more weight around the middle now, perhaps, but other than that…not bad. Not bad at all.
The bus wasn’t very busy today, as the summer season had finished weeks ago. There were two German lads at the back and Colonel Smithers in his usual aisle seat, off for his weekly lunch with his elderly mother in Berwick.
Cyril’s phone rang just as he pulled into Elwick. It was the depot calling. They knew he would never pick up a call while driving, not even with the fancy hands-free nonsense they had installed. When Cyril was driving, he was driving, nowt else.
It was still ringing when he pulled into the bus stop. He applied the handbrake and picked it up.
“Hey ‘up, petal, to what do I owe the honor?” Cyril called every woman petal and every man lad. He had reached the age where it was acceptable, and it concealed the fact that he struggled to remember names these days. The voice at the other end sounded confused. It was that young girl who’d taken over a few months back. Nikki? Vicki? Trixie?
“Ooh, I’m sorry, Cyril, I’ve clean forgot why I called you. What am I like, eh? Forget me own head next.”
Cyril chuckled. “No harm done, petal. Mebbe you just wanted to hear my sexy voice, eh? That it?”
“Get away with you, Cyril, you’re making me blush. See you later. Sorry.”
The spider that crawled out of the phone into his ear was so tiny that he didn’t notice a thing.
As he pulled out of the village and turned off to the east, Cyril started whistling. He was whistling his way through Help! by The Beatles this week. Not every song on the album, mind, just his favorites. It was a beautiful day. He was thoroughly enjoying negotiating the narrow lanes when the colonel’s voice rang out behind him.
“Perkins? Perkins! Where the devil are you taking us?”
Cyril didn’t take his eyes off the road. “What do you mean, Colonel?” Cyril wouldn’t dare call the colonel lad. It just wouldn’t do. Anyhow, no one knew him by any other name than Colonel, and with a waxed mustache like that, he was never going to be called anything else.
“Just what I said, Perkins. You’re driving the wrong way. Why did you turn off back there? There’s nothing out here. Now, turn us around, man, or I’ll never be there in time for lunch.”
Cyril considered the colonel’s words and realized he was quite right. He was driving due east instead of north. There was nothing out here apart from a couple of farms. And the airstrip, of course. Suddenly, Cyril knew that was where he was heading. The bus leaned alarmingly as he took a left-hand bend at speed.
“We have to get to the airstrip, Colonel,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”
The colonel tried to get up and remonstrate with Cyril, but the next bend sent him flying back into his seat. There was a shout from the back in German, probably swearing, but Cyril had never had much luck picking up languages.
It was about five miles to the tiny airstrip and its single plane. Cyril knew he had to drive at the limit. This really was an emergency, and it was up to him to get there as fast as possible. The strange thing was, although he knew it was crucial, life and death and so on, he had absolutely no idea how he knew this. He slammed the gear stick into fourth and pushed the accelerator as hard as he could.
48
Innisfarne
Sian’s room was in the outbuilding furthest from the main block. John knocked cautiously at the door, already beginning to feel like he’d overreacted. He had spent two-thirds of his life thinking the worst of everyone, and it had proved a hard habit to break after he had been freed of Mason’s tyranny.
There was no answer, and he stood, undecided, at the door for over a minute. Twice he turned to go, convinced that he was looking for danger where there was none to be found, that he was, in fact, going to achieve nothing other than adding to this poor woman’s trauma. Twice, he turned back and knocked again, determined to put his mind at rest for Joni’s sake. Adam was dead, but that didn’t mean Joni was necessarily out of danger. Who else might be out there, looking for her?
The urge to protect Joni won out, and he pushed the door open. There were no locks on Innisfarne.
“Sian?” he said. There was no answer. He felt a brief frisson of shame as he breached the trust of the community, then he walked in.
The room was sparsely furnished, as were all the guest rooms on Innisfarne. The bed was made, the sheets and blankets tucked neatly into place. There was very little else to see. A hairbrush on the table and some make-up. A lot of make-up, surprisingly, the function of each item a mystery to John. Nothing more.
John remembered Sian arriving with just a backpack, which she always carried with her. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but if it was anything incriminating, it was sure to be in that backpack. There would be nothing here.
He scanned the bathroom, just in case. Nothing.
He walked back into the bedroom and was about to leave when he noticed three books on the shelf. Two of them, he recognized as having been left behind by previous visitors to the island. He’d read them both. The book he didn’t recognize was an old, small hardback. He lifted it down and flicked through it. Some kind of academic book about an ancient Christian sect. Strange reading material, but hardly evidence of any malicious intent. John shook his head. He knew there was something wrong about Sian, something that didn’t fit. She wasn’t who she said she was. That didn’t necessarily mean she was a threat, though. He wondered if he was succumbing to paranoia.
The door opened. Sian stood there, quite still. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even flinch. John closed the book and replaced it on the shelf.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I—.” He stopped, unsure how to continue.
Sian shrugged off her backpack, stepped forward and placed it on the bed.
“You don’t trust me,” she said, in a quiet, husky voice. “You must have your reasons. Go ahead, search my bag, if that’s what it’s going to take.”
John could feel his adrenaline levels dropping as he stepped forward and pulled the bag toward him. Sian would hardly let him look if there was anything to find. Still, for Joni’s sake and his own peace of mind, he knew he had to look. He undid the fastener and flipped open the top of the backpack, tilting it toward the window so he could see inside more easily.
At first, the contents didn’t make sense, they were so unexpected. Then his brain slotted everything into place and his adrenaline levels spiked as every muscle in his body seemed to tense simultaneously.
At the top of the bag, held in place by Velcro strips, were three grenades of some sort, and two handguns. At the bottom was some thin, coiled rope, and an object wrapped in cloth. John could see part of a wooden handle, covered in intricate carvings. He remembered Joni’s description of the knife Adam had carried.
John didn’t move, just flicked his eyes upward. He could only see the lower half of Sian’s body. Her hands were by her sides. In her left hand, she held her sunglasses. John remembered then what had seemed wrong when she had put them back on that morning. It had been the way her hair had moved. He looked at Sian’s right hand and saw the wig.
When he finally looked up, the emotion that was flooding his body wasn’t fear. It was shame. How could he have let Joni and Mee down like this? He, of all people, not questioning the fact that Sian always spoke in a whisper, which could disguise any voice, even to the extent of blurring the differences between male and female. As the shame dropped away, it was replaced by a hot, violent anger. He would protect those he loved. Wi
th his life, if necessary.
To John’s horror, Adam started laughing. The darkness in the bald man’s eyes made him hard to look at, but John met his gaze. He saw the insanity there, the absolute, profound loss of connection with all that was good, kind, or forgiving. He saw no hint of humanity, just complete self-belief mixed with utter contempt for anyone else. It was a look he recognized. He’d seen something similar in the mirror most of his life.
“You can’t save her,” said Adam. “All you’ve done is brought my plans forward by a day. Joni almost has poor Sian trusting her. She asked if I’d like to go for a walk with her tomorrow. I said yes. But now, I think I’ll go this morning. Surprise her.”
John knew he would never be able to overpower the younger man. His only hope lay in the weapons in the backpack.
There was no time left.
It had to be now.
John snatched one of the handguns and took a pace back, keeping the bed between them, bringing the weapon up to point it at Adam. Adam ignored the threat and climbed over the bed to get to him.
John didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger.
The quiet click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber held all the finality of a tolling funeral bell. Adam’s hands were on his throat, pushing him over, before he had a chance to move.
“Don’t worry,” said Adam, “I’m going to load it before I go to meet Joni.”
Strangely, it wasn’t Kate’s face that came into his mind while the roaring sound grew in his ears and the pressure became unbearable as he struggled, and failed, to take a breath, his fists pounding feebly at the fading figure on top of him.
It wasn’t Kate, or Mee. Or Joni. It was his brother’s face. It was Seb.
The darkness that had begun to fill the outside of his vision eventually rushed in and overwhelmed him.
49
East Of Elwick, Northumbria
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 92
