When I can’t take it anymore, and I am afraid I will endanger the tamaras, I leave the house, ostensibly to take a walk. Instead, I go back to West London, knowing they will be watching for me there.
I ride the night bus part of the way, but I walk for the last mile. I have my hat, my bandanna, my Zorro makeup, and my ruffled skirt. I want to be seen. I want to be followed.
One of the tamaras is on my tail. I’ve known this since I got off the bus, but I haven’t done anything about it. It’s nice to have backup, but I don’t want her to give me away because she does not know my strategy. My destination is the address they told me to report to for testing. I’m trying to decide what to do about the tamara when I spot the first government agent. I’m sure the site is not hot anymore, but they must have considered the possibility that I would be back and left someone to mind the shop.
He probably does not have enough staff to follow me, but I’m guessing he’ll be reporting back. This might take time, or he might have one of those mobile phones. I lead him to a place I can double back on. I see the tamara become tentative, and I think she’s twigged that I’m doing something, but not what.
On this occasion, London smells fresher to me, like the wind has generated a reprieve from the filth and chemical muck. A dog barks somewhere. I do not miss the tamara following me, but she has not noticed the agent. I double back on myself, confusing her while I hide behind a wheelie bin. When I let her agonize over my location, snapping her head left and right, I tap her shoulder from behind.
“Tamara, why are you here?” I ask.
She starts, but does not look surprised.
“I’m here to help,” she says.
“You’re . . . I appreciate the effort.”
The dog stops barking, I stop talking, the world itself seems to go still. I’m running before I know what’s happening and I pull the tamara with me, against all my training. The first shots hit the concrete wall to my left, and I feel splinters on my skin. The tamara has started running on her own steam, so I drop her hand. The reports for the shots vary, so we are dealing with more than one shooter. I change direction and duck behind a car, and across the road, the tamara does the same, hiding in a spot from where she can see me. I have no gun. Never bring a fist to a gunfight.
On cue the tamara reaches into her handbag and slides a gun across to me—an unloaded semiautomatic. She shoves a magazine across just as the firing starts up again. I do not want to wait for ground troops to arrive. I hear sporadic screams and shouts. General people, scared, confused. And there are mollys all around, distorting my sense of the danger. This is a situation from which to retreat. I have no idea who I’m dealing with, and while I know the lay of the land from when I lived in the area, I do not know how many people they have or how well armed they are. The tamara’s chest caves in, and before I can make sense of it her head shatters. Her brain lands two feet away from what’s left of her neck stump. High-velocity shot.
I don’t hesitate. I run toward a lane that I know will take me out. A shot misses me, but it’s close enough that I feel the air displaced. I lose the hat. A part of me knows I’m not going to make it, and I’m strangely calm. Less calm when I see two tamaras running straight for me. Behind me the bullets get closer, while from doorways, from inside cars, climbing out of windows, dozens of tamaras emerge and converge.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I say.
They don’t. Some of them fall under the gunfire, but before I know it the tamaras are scrumming around me. When I’m fully surrounded they lock arms with one another and me, tamaras jumping on top of us to form a roof. It is like an ancient Roman infantry defense maneuver, like a tortoise. I hear their cries as they die. They all but lift me bodily out of danger and farther into the night. My boots drag along the road. The shots continue and blood drips onto my hair and down my face. Teeth and shattered bone fall like hail in the storm of blood. Body shots result in a rank smell of shit from pierced bowels. I am grazed by one bullet, and I strain my ankle when I attempt to run for myself. When one tamara dies another quickly replaces it. Her. Replaces her. Their cries are truncated, and there is weeping, but all of this is heard through an adrenaline haze. I cannot tell you what is true and what is imagined, what is tears and what is sweat from fear or exertion. We pass through the dark streets like a carnival of the impossible, trailing blood and dead tamaras.
Nine
Tamara thinks I’m suicidal.
She doesn’t say it, but it’s in her eyes. She thinks whatever was in my Prime is in me, and that I’m going to kill myself. She thinks I’m a danger to her and wonders if I’m worth saving. This is a rational thought when you’re elbow deep in blood. Though there are numerous dead and broken, Tamara says we have to pack up and move because we will be traced. She is saving the conversation with me for later.
Am I suicidal? I don’t know. I’ve certainly been stupid and I can’t formulate strategy to save my life. I can’t just use memories of what I’ve been taught. I need experience.
“Southbourne, pick up the pace or get out of the way,” says Tamara.
Three tamaras holding weapons stand guard at the periphery of our field hospital. Some are out on the street, keeping watch, and one is specifically tasked with manning the phone, in case someone calls in. The tamaras have field medical training, picked up from somewhere. I know some first aid, but nothing on this level. Blood transfusions are easy when everybody has the same blood type. There is a quiet hurry, organized, lacking the panic I would expect in this situation. I reinsert myself into the moment, assisting, fetching, discarding, holding hands.
Three transports arrive and take the tamaras off to a new location. I leave with the third, even though Tamara wants me in the first.
The new place is a disused factory. The inside has been modified and I’m sure work must have been done before today. I wonder how many contingency plans Tamara has. I’m too tired and buzzed from adrenaline to decode the symbolism of moving from church to factory. The floor has been divided up by wooden boards, and the windows blacked out. I make myself small, I change bandages, I clean up blood, I take sentry shifts, I anticipate. A fortnight passes and nobody comes for us. Nothing makes the papers, a silence that is loud in and of itself.
Tamara and I go for a walk among the brutal industrial buildings. It’s evening, and the area is mostly abandoned, so it’s safe. I’m not wearing my Buffalo Gal makeup because it’s too distinctive.
“How do you feel about teaching?” she asks. She keeps her eyes straight ahead.
“Teaching what?”
“Everything you know. Anatomy, spycraft, hand-to-hand. Just teach a few of us; we’ll teach the others.”
“Because you think I might die and the knowledge will be lost?”
“Are you going to die?”
“We all are.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not going to kill myself, Tamara. At least not today.”
“Then you can spend your time teaching.”
* * *
I swear this used to be easier.
My muscles are on fire, my joints are lubricated with acid, and my heart is pumping molten lava. Half a mile left to return to base, yet I want to collapse right here and never get up again. In the final stretch, when I sprint, squeezing yet more energy out of my depleted muscles, I see one of the tamaras waiting for me on the porch of the factory.
I slow and stop in front of her, the original, I think. She has an unaffected confidence that I envy.
“The troops are waiting,” she says.
“Thank you.” It comes out more formal than I had intended.
A tamara wafts out of the side door, flicks her eyes in my direction, then goes to her original. She cups a hand over her mouth and whispers in Tamara’s ear. Her free hand reaches for the tamara’s and their hand-holding is intimate, so much that I look away, feeling voyeuristic, like I’ve seen a private thing. I have no relationship with anyone like that. The tamar
a goes in without another glance at me.
“There’s been a new arrival. I have to go meet her.”
My mother’s voice comes to me. Molly’s mother. “It.” Not “her,” dorogoy. “It.” Always “it.”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Keep close to them. Keep them close. How do you like each other? They do what you tell them.”
Tamara says, “We have a few minutes. Come with me.”
Tamara’s space is larger than mine, but populated with bunks and mattresses on the floor. There are two tamaras in the room, one lounging on a bed and one standing barefoot, naked, in the center of the room. The one on the floor pipes up, afraid of blame. “Don’t say a word. I tried to dress her, but she shrugged the clothes off.”
Tamara steps forward and gathers the duplicate into her arms. “Welcome.” She sniffs at the hair. “Where did she . . . ?”
“Found her in the garden.” They had improvised a garden on the roof.
Tamara whispers something long and convoluted, and the duplicate smiles.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“Is that it?” I ask.
“It’s too bad your mother taught you to kill yours.”
“The mollys.”
“Perhaps try to love them, instead?”
I train the tamaras, not to any degree that would make them soldiers or spies, but enough to respond to commands and hit back when attacked. Tamara is the most useful, and she probably has more knowledge and the most complete memory. It is a bit difficult getting her to unlearn the techniques she has depended on for so long. I start by refining her reach, changing her choices, improving her flexibility—making her a better her. When she trusts me I introduce what I think might be useful from Systema, then Brazilian jujitsu. It’s as complete an education as I can offer with limited time.
At the back of my mind, I know this will make it easier for them to subdue me when we next have a confrontation. It makes no difference to me because I have never been able to overcome Tamara’s numbers.
The phantom mollys at first watch with baleful expressions, and a month later begin to copy the actions of the tamaras, as if they themselves are training.
Only a few of them take the anatomy classes, but those who do are very keen. I learn that over the years Tamara and the tamaras have gathered to themselves a vast expertise in a number of subjects by distributed learning. They have nurses, accountants, cooks, surveyors, artists, and a whole raft of middle management tamaras. Tamara is hyperorganized and contingency centered. They have money, they have multiple jobs all over London, and there are properties and bolt-holes ready at a moment’s notice. While I teach them, I pick all of this up.
I am hardest on myself, of course. I get fit, and I feel the callus build on my hands, elbows, and feet. In between conditioning, I watch the peaceful duplicates and learn how they love one another.
* * *
Most nights, I fall into a deep sleep and don’t wake until morning. One night, bladder full because of too much caffeine, I rise and on my way to the toilet I hear whispers. This I would have ignored, but it is a man’s voice.
“. . . relative to her?” says the man.
“Are you kidding? I have never seen anything like her. Combat is a sublime art that she embodies. Her reflexes are phenomenal and her instincts are inhuman. And I mean I think she is a new kind of human. I sometimes imagine that she invented violence and the rest of us are pale imitators. I, we, will never be that good.” This is Tamara.
“But you will be good enough?”
I know the voice.
It is Vitali Ignatiy Nikitovich.
Transcript
This isn’t going to work.
[PD exits.]
[cut]
Ten
I don’t just leave the next morning. I wait for Tamara to bring up the visit, but she doesn’t. She acts as if nothing happened. Options tumble in my mind, wondering if what I heard is benign, if I’m overreacting, what other possible explanations there could be, but even though there is much I don’t know, the secrecy leaves me feeling unsettled, and unsafe, and a Molly Southbourne who does not feel safe soon erupts into violence. The phantom mollys seem to agree, because about five of them just converge and try to stare me to death. I think hard at them: Fuck off!
I escape without killing or maiming anyone. One day I leave for my daily jog and just keep going.
I stuff all my money in my sports bra, put on my jogging gear, and that’s it. I don’t spend any time agonizing. Luckily we put on partial disguises when leaving the factory anyway, so my efforts to look different are not remarkable to the few tamaras who are awake. The morning comes with a mist that I break through like a zombie. I get catcalled by men on the early shift, and catch stares when I get on the first bus I can find. A part of me thinks the other passengers are working for the government. I disembark after an hour with the dawn sun in my eyes.
My heart hammers in the rib cage much longer than it should, but I am unmolested, for now. I walk calmly away from the bus and change clothes as soon as I find a Salvation Army bin. I select a man’s apparel, compress my hair into a woolen hat, and disguise my walk. Nobody approaches me as I spiral farther away from the bus stop on side streets and alleys. When I get tired, I find an alcove where I sit, watching three drunks argue until all the office workers start their perambulations. A sadness comes upon me, but I shrug it off. Sadness is a luxury for later.
I wait outside a supermarket until a shopper in a hurry leaves his car running. I don’t drive well, or at all. Molly could, though. I don’t think, I just gun the engine and screech out of there. I take the car south, out of the city, have several near misses, and keep going until it runs out of gas around Plumstead. I cross the road, and take buses to random destinations. By nightfall I slip into the harsh scrub of Southmere Park in Thamesmead. I walk over stubby grass, not stopping until I reach the cover of trees, and I’m close enough to civilization that I can get supplies, but far away enough that I can finally rest. Ghost mollys stand guard around me as I sleep.
* * *
I settle into a routine of sorts, taking my breakfast from the bugs and crawlies under a rock or whatever I can find stripping bark, shitting in holes, washing and drinking from Southmere Lake, exploring for items that might be of use, like stones and rocks of different shapes and sizes. It is cold, but I place dry leaves and moss between layers of clothing as insulation, a skill Molly learned from a homeless man. I can’t find any pyrite, but I have made a stone ax, a knife, and a hand mill. Neolithic human, bitches, I say to the phantoms. I initially plan to use the lake as a food source, for both fish and invertebrates, but I have to be careful of campers and the Southmere is not exactly teeming with life.
While I’m living in the wild, I have time to reflect, and keep coming back to the same problem. What was Vitali plotting with Tamara? The first Molly’s memories come to me in irregular bursts, although I have a lot of her knowledge. I am sure that until Tamara introduced me I had never met Vitali.
I meditate. Nothing fancy, just panic control and significance mining. In those cold, dark nights I decide I want to live, to survive. I decide to be Molly Southbourne and to stop playing at being her. Me. Up until now I have been drifting, following the currents that come my way, but that’s not how I was taught.
At night I make forays to the nearby areas, stealing what I need, paying for others if I think I will not be remembered. I take stray bits of clothing, some utensils, matches, food, sanitary pads, alcohol, infrequently enough that they might be considered misplaced, not stolen. From a distance I hear their music, their copulations, their arguments, and I smell their hash. Not so neolithic anymore.
I’m scraping edible lichen off a rock one morning when I hear movement behind me. I already know it’s too late before I turn. The police are all around me, beyond striking distance. My weapons are at my base, and all I have with me is my stone knife and my two giant ovari
es. They have semiautomatic weapons, drawn, and with the kind of commitment in their eyes that tells me to surrender. But I wake up and I’m surrounded not by cops, but by phantom mollys and the sound of rain battering my shelter. Even in the gloom I can see the whites of their eyes and they remind me of a statue of Medusa I once saw, frozen in a silent scream.
I talk to the mollys and I am not alarmed when they start talking back at me. I accept that I am occasionally psychotic, and I accept that I need medication, maybe all the time, maybe not, but at this stage of my short life, talking makes me calmer.
“We can’t keep running,” I say.
The molly I’m talking to agrees. “We need a place to live, to settle, before we catch our death out here.”
“Mother taught us how to live rough,” I say. “I picked up a lot from Tamara, I know what to do, but we have more urgent matters to deal with first. We need to make ourselves safe.”
“How?”
“We need to take the fight to those who want to harm us.”
“No more running?” says the molly.
“No more running,” I say.
“I like this plan,” she says.
* * *
I start by calling the tattoo number from a phone box in Abbey Wood Station.
“The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please hang up and dial again. The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please hang up and dial again. The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please hang up and dial again.”
I hang up.
My calls have always gone through before, and I don’t know what this means.
I try one more time with the same result. It’s interesting the kind of sinking feeling you get when the foundations of your world are shaken. Without the voice on the other end of the phone, I am without options. I don’t quite hear a voice, but I get a strong impression of my mother’s disapproval. She would no doubt say she raised me to always have options. But that wasn’t me; that was Molly. I am an imperfect copy, a fraud. Like the goldcrest I saw. In legend, they’re called the “king of birds,” but it’s said they hid in the feathers of an eagle and, using it as a launchpad, soared higher to be crowned. I’m hiding in Molly’s feathers, but I won’t get crowned, I won’t become a queen or a knight.
The Survival of Molly Southbourne Page 5
