Gareth L Powell

by Gareth Powell

  35

  Tower’s space launch facilities in North Africa: rocket gantries silhouetted

  against the rising sun; platinum missiles hurling themselves into the wide, blue

  desert sky.

  “And what happens to the infected?”

  “They’ll be euthanized and incinerated.”

  Lee swallowed.

  “I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with this.”

  Harrell eased himself into an armchair. “There’s no reason not to be.

  This is purely a security contract. It’s just like guarding young offenders or

  illegal immigrants. You keep them detained and you process them. If they’re

  clean, they leave by the front door; if they’re infected…”

  Lee felt a shiver at the back of his neck.

  “What?”

  Harrell blew into his fist and opened his fingers, miming smoke.

  “They leave via the chimney.”

  Lee’s stomach tightened. On unsteady legs, he walked around and took

  a seat behind his desk. Picking up a pen, he tapped the end nervously against

  the palm of his opposite hand.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  The other man’s jowls settled around his collar like candle wax around

  the top of a cheap restaurant wine bottle.

  “In which case, I’d have to advise you to think quickly. We won’t ask

  twice.”

  Outside, the rain thickened, falling like static from a monochrome sky.

  It splashed onto the wooden decking of the balcony, and into Harrell’s

  abandoned wineglass, diluting the remaining orange juice.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  Above the sound of the rain, Lee heard pots clatter in the kitchen. Kerri

  and Lewis had been staying with him for the past fortnight, since Kerri’s release

  from hospital. With Heather dead and her assets in the hands of her

  inhospitable family, they had nowhere else to go.

  Harrell sniffed.

  “Have you ever considered politics, Mr. Doyle?”

  A plane whined overhead. Lee placed the pen on the desk and pushed

  back in his chair. The casters whispered on the wooden floor.

  “I’m just a software engineer.” His modesty was a default response, one

  he often used as a way of evading questions. Harrell didn’t fall for it.

  “Decide quickly,” he said. “And perhaps, while I’m waiting, you could

  offer me something a little stronger than fruit juice?”

  Lee stumbled to his feet. He glanced at the mantelpiece, where a smooth

  pebble sat between framed photographs and plastic trophies—a prize gathered

  by Lewis on a trip to Brighton the day before, and the first and only gift Lee’s

  son had ever given him.

  “Of course.”

  He walked over to the drinks cabinet and reached for the scotch. As he

  poured, his heart hammered against the lining of his chest. He’d lost his wife

  36

  the night the Reefs first came; almost lost Kerri in an outbreak. If further losses

  were to be avoided, something had to be done. Lone Tower squads had been

  rounding up changelings for months now. Several had already died in custody

  and been quietly vivisected in the corporation’s laboratories, the secrets of their

  rewritten DNA funneled into a hundred research and development projects.

  Taking control of the camps would merely be a way of formalizing the process,

  only this time with government backing. The potential rewards—both in terms

  of finance and science—were staggering. One of the changelings recovered

  from the Cornish debacle had been perfectly adapted to life underwater, with

  gills, webbed appendages, and a vastly increased lung capacity. Suppose

  somewhere, one of the Reefs spat out a human being capable of surviving in

  space without expensive air tanks and pressure suit? He could barely imagine

  how much something like that would be worth.

  “Sod it,” he said, letting his accent slip. “I’m in. The shareholders would

  kill me if I walked away from a government contract.” He passed one of the

  drinks to Harrell, who enfolded it in meaty fingers.

  “So, you’ll do it?”

  Lee bit his lip. He knew he was doing the right thing, the responsible

  thing; yet still felt as if he was about to agree to something huge, dark and

  irrevocable. He knocked back the whisky from his glass and swallowed hard.

  The fumes made his eyes water.

  “Yes.”

  THREE DAYS LATER, they came for Kerri.

  A Lone Tower security squad pulled into the car park of his building in

  an armoured troop carrier with blacked-out windows and Lone Tower logos

  on its sides. There were five of them, and they all carried assault rifles. Waving

  a signed court order, they simply walked through Lee’s bodyguards, who

  found themselves outgunned and legally outmaneuvered.

  When they came through the front door of his apartment, Lee blocked

  their path.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes sir. But there are to be no exceptions.”

  “I could fire you right here, right now.”

  “Wouldn’t do any good, sir. We’re hired through a subcontractor. You’d

  have to take it up with them.”

  Two of the men restrained him while the other three marched Kerri from

  the building. Her hands were cuffed but her chin remained high and defiant as

  if, somehow, she’d always known this would happen.

  Lewis kicked and screamed for his mother. Lee held him back as the

  doors slammed and the truck drove away.

  As it vanished from sight, the boy twisted in his grip and buried his face

  in Lee’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay.” Lee put a hand to the back of the kid’s head.

  “No, it isn’t.” Lewis’s fingers clawed at Lee’s shirt. “You let them take

  her.” He pulled away, features screwed up like a fist, an index finger held out

  37

  in shaking accusation. “You’re a monster. You let them take her. You let them.”

  He turned and ran. “I hate you; I hate you; I hate you!”

  38

  7.

  THE LIMOUSINE EMERGED from the underground garage, nosing its way through

  shouts and placards. Hands banged the windows. Feet kicked the bodywork.

  It pulled out into the street and a shoe hit the rear windscreen. Then they were

  clear and moving through the city. On the back seat, Lee Doyle loosened his tie

  and undid the top button of his shirt. Despite their hatred of him, he couldn’t

  summon any animosity towards the protestors. Let them shake their

  handwritten signs and shout their slogans. They weren’t his problem anymore;

  he was leaving, and he was taking Lewis with him. Looking through the

  smoked glass window at the black taxis and red buses, he knew these moments

  in the car were the last he’d ever spend in London with his son, so he tried to

  drink it all in with his eyes—the tourists and pigeons flocking together in

  Trafalgar Square; the brick-faced pubs and narrow side streets; the bus stops

  and Underground stations. He tried to stuff it all into his head so he’d never

  forget; so, he could carry it with him on the journey ahead.

  Beside him, hunched up against the far door, Lewis had plugged into

  his tablet. He had his earphones in, mainlining aggressive skater music. He

 
; hadn’t spoken since the ride began and had barely looked up from the screen.

  The past few days had been tense for them both, and Lee preferred this silent

  treatment to the usual tantrums and shouting.

  Between them on the seat, a locked steel briefcase held Lee’s few

  remaining possessions: some personal papers; an old USB memory stick; a gold

  pen; some sheep’s wool; a gold ring; a lump of clear Perspex containing a single

  Alpine snowflake; a plastic bullet; the pebble his son had given him; and

  enough money to get them where they were going. He’d had to abandon

  everything else. He’d left his penthouse apartment unlocked and his Porsche

  on a South London street with the windows open and the key in the ignition.

  His stock portfolio had been signed over to a children’s charity and his modern

  art collection donated to the National Gallery. Beside his son, the only things

  that mattered to him were the items in the briefcase and the clothes he wore.

  Following instructions, the driver took them out along the A40, towards

  Oxford. Lee had a helicopter standing-by at a private airfield near High

  Wycombe. By the time they got there, it was fuelled and ready to depart.

  At the cabin door, he paused to take a last breath of England. The air

  smelled of hot concrete, aviation fuel and cut grass. Inside the cabin, he tried to

  help Lewis strap in, but the boy shook him off. The kid didn’t want his help;

  didn’t even want to be here. Lee had pulled him from school without notice,

  against the protestations of the staff. Now, they were the only passengers.

  Through the small window at his elbow, he saw the limo retreating. The driver

  had been well paid and meticulously briefed; the car would be found the

  following morning, abandoned in a service area close to the Severn Bridge with

  Lee’s handwritten suicide note pinned to the centre of its steering wheel. A pair

  of his favourite shoes and a gold Rolex would be found on the bridge itself, as

  39

  if discarded by their owner. Lee rubbed his face with his hands. If his ruse

  worked, he and his son would be presumed drowned, their bodies washed out

  to sea on the estuary’s tide.

  Overhead, the rotors were turning. Lee closed his eyes and imagined the

  hardness of sun-warmed stone blocks, the smell of sheep shit and fresh grass,

  and the thudding downdraught of an army chopper wending its way

  southwards, following the river down the length of a Welsh valley. He

  squeezed the armrests. Memories were forged iron links, fettering him to the

  past. The only way to smash free was to become somebody else, to shed his

  past like a spent ammo clip and take on a new identity. As the tarmac fell away

  and the greys of the airfield shriveled into the green and yellow squares of the

  Buckinghamshire countryside, he imagined crumpling his life in his hand like

  a discarded, half-written letter.

  Goodbye, Lee Doyle.

  Fall away in the downdraught.

  HIS PHONE RANG as the helicopter crossed the inundated coast between

  Portsmouth and Chichester.

  “Yes?”

  “Mister Doyle? It’s George Tyson.”

  “Who?”

  “Bullock’s man.”

  “What do you want?”

  Lee looked out of the rain-streaked cabin window. They were so low the

  helicopter’s skids almost kissed the water; its rotors whipped spray from the

  granite grey swell.

  “We found her, sir.”

  Lee’s heart seemed to pause in his chest.

  “Where is she?”

  “The camp on Anglesey.”

  “Can we get her out?”

  “We’re already trying.”

  He let out a long breath and wiped his free hand across his mouth. He

  had scarcely dared believe she would still be alive.

  “Have her taken to the launch facility.”

  “I will see to it.” The man gave a polite cough. “And sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you’d better take a look at the news.”

  Lee killed the call and used his phone to access a live TV feed. The

  pictures were the same on all the channels. The British army had stormed into

  the Lone Tower quarantine camp and research facility on Salisbury Plain, and

  the resulting footage had gone viral. At first, Lee tried to shield his son’s eyes

  from the images; but when the boy struggled, he gave up. He didn’t have the

  strength to resist. All he could do was watch in horror as the soldiers tried to

  help the emaciated prisoners. A shaking cameraman walked around the lip of

  one of the ‘tanks’—the large metal rooms where prisoners were systematically

  40

  drowned, and their skeletons bleached to kill off any lingering infection.

  Mounds of gleaming skulls lay in a trench out behind the building, waiting to

  be covered over and buried. Other trenches had already been back-filled with

  concrete—row upon row of them, stretching away towards the barbed wire at

  the camp’s perimeter. Enough, the voiceover suggested, to house five thousand

  bodies, perhaps more.

  In response, Lone Tower security personnel and scientists were being

  handcuffed and bundled into camouflaged lorries. In London, military police

  took control of the House of Commons and the government fell, live on air.

  Shamed politicians were led from the building with towels covering their faces.

  Lee Doyle, the head of the company operating and making a profit from the

  death camps, had been declared a fugitive and an enemy of humanity. An army

  spokesman promised that the new martial authority would do everything in

  its power to locate him and bring him to justice.

  Tears running down his face, Lee watched the reports cycle over and

  over, the same gristly images of the camps—and the pictures of his own face—

  repeating in a sequence he knew would torture him, waking and sleeping, for

  the rest of his life.

  He’d known things were bad; he’d just had no idea how bad…

  Without taking his eyes from the screen, he pulled the gold pen from the

  briefcase. It was the same pen with which he’d signed Harrell’s contract,

  believing he was doing something to help save humanity from the scourge of

  the Reefs; the same pen he’d used to lend his stamp of approval to reports and

  planning documents that had eventually led thousands, maybe hundreds of

  thousands, of men, women and children to their deaths. He wanted to drop it,

  to throw it away. Instead, he closed his fist around it. He would never let it go.

  He would carry it with him now, wherever he went. Thanks to its gold case, it

  had always been a heavy pen. Now, clasped in his hand, its weight was almost

  more than he could bear.

  TWO HOURS AND forty minutes after crossing the English Channel, the jet

  touched down at the Lone Tower launch facility in Algeria.

  Stepping from the plane, Lee put a hand to shade his eyes against the

  desert glare. Sweat broke out beneath his shirt. The heat here was an order of

  magnitude greater than it had been in London.

  The Hammaguir facility lay in the desert southwest of Béchar. It

  comprised a brace of runways and a cluster of prefabricated buildings; a few

  Fuller domes; and a new, white-painted water tower. He
at mirages shimmered

  at either the end of the runway. The first French satellite had been launched

  from here in 1965. Now, Lone Tower owned the place, and, for the past five

  years, had been using it to launch payloads into orbit.

  Aware that he would never again ride in his private jet, Lee pocketed a

  small cardboard book of complimentary matches as a souvenir. The cover had

  the Lone Tower corporate logo printed on the front.

  With Lewis in tow, he made his way across the sand-blown tarmac to

  the main building at the edge of the airfield, where he was welcomed by one of

  41

  the project leaders, a stocky former NASA employee by the name of Constance

  Marcelene.

  “Welcome to Algeria,” she said.

  Lee gave her a thin smile. The three of them were alone in the arrivals

  lounge.

  “I want three spaces on the next launch.”

  Connie’s heavy mascara blinked at him.

  “Three…?”

  “Me, Lewis, and one other.”

  The woman frowned. “But it’s only seventy-two hours away. We have

  the crew assigned, most of the cargo loaded...”

  “I don’t care.” Lee un-shouldered his bag and let it fall to the floor. “Do

  whatever it takes, but you have to get us on that flight.”

  Connie pursed her lips.

  “Things are at a crucial stage,” she said. “The Widening Gyre’s going to

  leave next week, whether we’ve finished loading or not. With all due respect,